Smash hit

Afterwards, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said that the Prince and Mr Aziz had not raised the Hussain issue; they had talked instead about the earthquake, parliamentary democracy in Pakistan and cricket.

Mr Aziz confessed that during a recent visit to London he had spent a day watching his team at Lord’s. "Did we win?" he asked, turning to his aides. As if he didn’t know.

Down on the hot, sunny lawn, sealed from the outside world by massive gates and steel barriers, a reconstruction of some long-past Delhi Durbar appeared to be taking place, with waiters in fantail Punjabi turbans preparing a buffet under crimson velvet pavilions for several dignitaries.

It was in fact an event to launch a Pakistani arm of the Prince’s International Youth Business Trust, an extension of the Prince’s Trust which has already helped 70,000 young entrepreneurs worldwide.

Inside a giant marquee the Prince and the Duchess toured a row of stands at which local businessmen who had already made good displayed their wares.

They included one exporter of military uniform accessories who sells cap badges to the Metropolitan Police, sporrans to Scots and the eagle and swastika flash of the SS to collectors of such strange things in Europe.

At another stand the Prince was presented with a chitrali, the traditional white, woollen, flat, round hat of northern Pakistan. Despite the entreaties of photographers he absolutely refused to wear it, making as if to throw it at them instead.

Having been on several silly hat tours in his time, he now knows what sort of image will knock any serious purpose off the front pages.

But it was the Duchess who scooped the jackpot. At the stall of Farah Leghari, a Karachi dress designer, she was presented with a royal blue poncho-style top hung with crystals and matching trousers to wear at an official banquet later in the week, and a long fuchsia shirt and trousers encrusted with pearls to wear when she visits a mosque later this week.

Ms Leghari disclosed that she had been commissioned by the Pakistan Government to make the two outfits at a total cost of £1,300. She had been secretly supplied with the Duchess’s measurements, but was far too discreet to say what they were.

Later in the day the royal couple paid a morale-boosting visit to the British High Commission in Islamabad, one of the largest diplomatic missions in the world with 150 diplomats and 500 locally recruited staff, many of them processing the torrent of visa applications to enter Britain, of which 40 per cent are rejected.

Tonight the Prince and the Duchess are to attend a reception for the great and the good of Pakistan, where guests included the inevitable Imran Khan, now an opposition politician, Shehryar Khan, who was chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board until that recent ball-tampering huff at Lord’s.

An older Pakistan was represented, too, with three former potentates from colonial days who have lost all but their wondrously exotic titles: the Khan of Kalat, the Mir of Hunza and, of course, the Wali of Swat.

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks