Is this any way to treat a Duchess?

HARRRUMPH!

"After two days of stiff-bottomed American formality, Charles and Camilla's US tour broke free yesterday with a delicious moment of slapstick.
The impeccably correct Surgeon General of the United States, dressed in the gold braid uniform of a Vice-Admiral, greeted his royal visitors outside a medical establishment in Bethesda, Maryland.

Having given a neat little bow and made a few sentences of gluey small talk, Vice-Admiral Richard H Carmona slipped his hand round Camilla's back.


He then tried to walk her through a plate-glass window.

Maybe the camera bulbs had blinded him. Maybe it is some years since the Surgeon General last wielded a scalpel over a patient's bloated appendix (given his eyesight, one hopes so). But he simply didn't notice the disaster looming.

This Vietnam veteran, Commander of the US Public Health Service, onetime member of the US Special Forces, thought he was steering the Duchess of Cornwall through an open doorway.

Prince Charles saw his new wife being hurtled towards certain disaster. He lifted a hand towards his mouth.

Camilla was by now trying to put on the brakes, a thoroughbred reluctant to enter a horsebox. The Surgeon General a man was not to be deterred. No, sir! Forward they surged, ever closer to the plate glass.

Eventually the photographers let out a shout of 'noooo!' and 'wrong way, mate', and at the 11th moment Mr Carmona realised his imminent error.

The Duchess hit the brakes and she came to a halt about three inches from the 8ft high sheet of glass. It was like one of those thriller films when the runaway train finally comes to a stop within touching distance of the heroine in distress.

Camilla got the giggles

Charles, connoisseur of The Goons, hooted at the near-miss. Camilla got the giggles, too. She turned to the photographers and touched the tip of her nose - as if to say: 'One more step and this would have been squashed.' Killer Carmona was covered in embarrassment, poor chap. Still, as a registered nurse he could presumably have made himself useful if the worst had come to pass."

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