THE Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are to make a hastily arranged trip to New Orleans to meet victims of Hurricane Katrina, but the public response to their US visit appears to be one of profound indifference.

A Gallup poll published yesterday found that four fifths of Americans had no interest in the eight-day tour that begins in New York today. Only 19 per cent wanted to meet Charles and Camilla, according to the poll that appeared in USA Today under the headline “Visit is a royal bore for most in the USA”. By contrast, 30 per cent would like to meet Princes William and Harry.

In similar vein, the Miami Herald declared: “It’s the un- Diana tour, in which a couple of middle-aged, earnest eccentrics from the English countryside take an educational holiday abroad”.

People magazine has described the Prince of Wales as “that chap with the kilts and all those big homes”. Ruth Hilton, senior editor of OK! magazine, said: “If Tom (Cruise) and Katie (Holmes) get married on the same day, no coverage for Charles and Camilla”.

The Prince has tried to play down that this is his first official US visit since 1985 when Diana, Princess of Wales, dazzled the American media.

In an interview broadcast on the CBS primetime current affairs show 60 Minutes on Sunday night, he joked: “You wouldn’t want to see me all the time. You’d get bored.”

But royal insiders have revealed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had tried to persuade the Prince to visit the US several times over the years. Mark Bolland, his former deputy private secretary, said: “He was always nervous of America — fearing rejection by a culture that he saw as being more aligned to the Princess of Wales’s celebrity than his man-with-a-mission message.”

The couple begin their tour with a visit to Ground Zero and the adjoining British memorial garden, where they will meet the families of some of the Britons who died on 9/11. After addressing a youth enterprise seminar at the UN, the Prince will rejoin the Duchess at a reception in the Museum of Modern Art hosted by Sir Philip Thomas, the British Consul-General in New York. Those attending are believed to include Robert De Niro and Sarah Jessica Parker, star of Sex and the City.

The Prince’s CBS interview was sandwiched between an overrunning football game and the film Vampire Bats.

Looking decidedly uncomfortable and occasionally glancing off-camera towards his public relations adviser, the Prince said his job in life was to worry about Great Britain and its inhabitants.

Steve Kroft, the reporter who pre-recorded the interview in the Prince’s garden at Highgrove, had clearly been advised that any questions about the Prince’s children, his wives or his mother were strictly off limits, which left only the more nebulous concepts with which he concerns himself. Introducing him as “Great Britain’s most popular ambassador” and “somewhere between a brand and a public institution”, Kroft asked the Prince about his public role and that of his charities.

“The most important thing is to be relevant, which isn’t easy. It’s very easy to dismiss anything I say, so I’ve tried to put my money where my mouth is,” the Prince said, adding with his trademark self-deprecation: “I only hope when I’m dead and gone they might appreciate it a little bit more.”

Only once did he display the stirrings of passion, when he railed against the trends of progress and over-efficiency. “If you look at the latest figures on climate change and global warming, it’s terrifying,” he said looking straight into the camera. Perhaps reflecting his weariness for the circuit of official receptions, he added: “These official visits are quite difficult to escape — it would be nice to do it privately.”

The Prince also brushed aside media reports that he talks to his plants. “It just shows you cannot make a joke without them taking it seriously — it is the same old story.”

The interview was intercut with shots of the Prince performing recent public engagements with the Duchess while the reporter said: “Camilla is said to be more interested in supporting rather than overshadowing her husband.”

But when the interviewer made one final stab at a personal question, suggesting that the Prince must now be a happy man, he got an evasive answer. “If that’s what you think, then I’m absolutely delighted,” the Prince replied, with a grin suggesting relief that the ordeal was over. The New Orleans visit will be squeezed in on Friday after Washington and before San Francisco.

www.timesonline.co.uk/americas
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