WHAT should have been no more than a happy holiday snap among the snows of Klosters soured yesterday into a right royal little grump.

Every year at this time the Prince of Wales and his sons kit themselves out in ski suits, rictus smiles and gritted teeth to pose for the cameras at the start of their ski holiday. They hate it, we know they hate it, but the deal is that in return for five minutes of their stilted malarkey we’ll leave them alone for the rest of the week.

Even before princes and press had faced up at their agreed rendezvous in the village of Monbiel on the outskirts of Klosters — the weather yesterday was too bad for on-the-piste shots — the air was dense with the acrid smell of disfavour.

Broadcasters’ microphones placed on the snow in front of the royal trio picked up the Prince of Wales’s sotto voce mutterings as he tried to arrange himself in photogenic pose with Prince William and Prince Harry, eventually putting an arm around each of them.

“What do I do?” he asked Prince William. “Just keep smiling,” his cool and poised elder son advised him.

“Bloody people,” the Prince of Wales muttered quite audibly. “I hate doing this.”

As a seasoned veteran of such encounters, the Prince knew perfectly well that his grumblings would be heard. He is old enough to know to keep private thoughts to himself.

But his dander was up. Paddy Harverson, his spokesman, who may sometimes wish for the quiet pastures of his former job interpreting the runic grunts of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, explained that the Prince was not at all happy that paparazzi photographers had the previous day pursued Prince William and his skiing partner Kate Middleton, who has joined the royal party at the Swiss resort.

Mr Harverson, papering over a crack that was rapidly becoming a crevasse, assured the assembled press pack that the Prince did not hold the media in contempt. “He wasn’t looking forward to (the photo call). He prefers it when he skis, and he just wanted to get up into the mountains.”

Miss Middleton, 22, has for some months teetered on the abyss of tabloid fame, and may just have fallen into it head first. The daughter of parents who run a mail-order toy firm from their home in Berkshire is a fellow student of Prince William at St Andrews, shares a house with him and two other undergraduates, and is increasingly mentioned as his constant companion.

She took care to stay well away from yesterday’s photo call, and Prince William delivered a firm “no” to questions about whether another royal wedding might be in the offing.

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