The royal may face censure from the army over his behaviour in Las Vegas, after images of him at a private party were published on an American website. 
 
 Military codes of conduct warn officers that he must maintain high standards of professionalism “both on and off operations”. 
 
 The guidelines state that members of the army must not display any “social misbehaviour”, especially if it results in any damage to corporate image or reputation. 
 
 The pictures of the third-in-line to the throne showed him wearing just a necklace and wristband, while covering his genitals with his hands. 
 
 Army experts today said the prince would probably be reprimanded but not severely punished over the episode. 
 
 One military source said: “His commanding officer will probably have a word but I imagine his family might be even more annoyed at his stupidity.” 
 
 Another expert, a former instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, said the Prince is most likely to face an “interview without coffee”. 
 
 “It is very stupid doing that anywhere near cameras,” he said. “I don’t know how his minders let that happen. My view is that he will probably get a telling off. If he’d just come back from active service and was letting off steam it might be different.” 
 
 St James's Palace has confirmed the naked man in the pictures is Prince Harry but declined to comment further. 
 
 A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence would not say whether the incident will result in disciplinary action. 
 
 The images were published on the US-based gossip website TMZ. They are available for publication by other newspapers for a five-figure sum. ||||| A St James’s Palace spokesman confirmed that it had contacted the Press Complaints Commission about the images, which were published on a US celebrity website and widely circulated online. 
 
 The two pictures, taken on a mobile phone in a hotel suite, were taken by a fellow reveller, and sold for an estimated £10,000. 
 
 The 27-year-old prince is wearing nothing but a watch and the distinctive thing necklace as he embraces a naked young woman who is clutching a pool cue during a game of “strip billiards”. 
 
 The palace stated that publication of the images, taken in a high rollers suite at the Wynn and Encore hotel complex costing up to £5,000 a night, would be a breach of the prince’s privacy. 
 
 The spokesman declined to say whether or not the prince, who was on a private holiday with friends, paid for the suite himself or accepted the hotel’s hospitality. 
 
 Prince Harry, an Apache helicopter pilot, is independently wealthy and will inherit an estimated £10 million from his late mother’s estate when he turns 30 in 2014. 
 
 The holiday has already cost the prince dearly, having raised serious questions about his judgment and his ability to represent the Queen as a senior royal statesman. 
 
 It is understood that his protection officers were present in the hotel suite during Friday night’s party but the incident fuelled debate about whether or not they should be expected to step in unless his life is at risk. 
 
 Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “Royal protection officers are there to protect him for security reasons they are not there to regulate his life.” 
 
 The prince is expected to receive a dressing down from the military when he returns to his Army base in Wattisham in Suffolk within the coming days. 
 
 Military codes of conduct warn officers that the must maintain high standards of professionalism “both on and off operations” and experts said he would likely be censured. 
 
 A former instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, said the Prince is most likely to face an “interview without coffee”. 
 
 “It is very stupid doing that anywhere near cameras,” he said. “I don’t know how his minders let that happen. My view is that he will probably get a telling off. If he’d just come back from active service and was letting off steam it might be different.” 
 
 Palace aides were keen to play down the incident, insisting the prince was simply “letting off steam”. 
 
 But while sources were at pains to point out that the prince was on a private holiday, his advisers were said to have been locked in meetings as they discussed how to deal with the fallout. 
 
 The images are feared to have undone much of the hard work undertaken in recent years to reconstruct Prince Harry’s image and move away from the controversies of his past. ||||| Prince Harry has added a raw twist to the Vegas Strip. 
 
 
 
 The rowdy royal is returning to Britain on Thursday with a lot of explaining to do about photos showing him in the buff, holding his crown jewels and cavorting with an equally nude beauty. 
 
 
 
 The salacious snapshots of the playboy prince were taken by a fellow reveler’s phone cam during a Sin City game of “strip billiards.” 
 
 PHOTOS: CELEBRITIES WHO LOOK LIKE THEY'VE HAD ONE TOO MANY 
 
 In the pictures, which appeared on TMZ.com Tuesday night, the 27-year-old helicopter pilot is going commando, wearing nothing more than a wrist watch and a necklace. 
 
 
 
 The necklace, with its dangling amber-colored stone, was a gift from his on-off girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the Daily Mail reported. 
 
 
 
 The shots captured the Prince of Wales putting the squeeze from behind on a nude babe, who appears to be holding a pool cue next to a pool table. 
 
 PHOTOS: THE WILD TIMES OF PRINCE HARRY 
 
 TMZ.com 
 
 TMZ reported that the au naturel horseplay happened Friday during a raging party in an $8,000-a-night suite at the Wynn and Encore hotel complex on the famed Vegas Strip. 
 
 
 
 Sources told the gossip website that Harry and pals invited a bevy of beauties up to his VIP suite for a jolly good time. 
 
 
 
 “We have no comment to make on the photos at this time,” a royal family rep told TMZ. 
 
 @suttonnick via Twitter 
 
 Buckingham Palace officials quickly moved to get publication of the photos banned in Britain, arguing to the country’s Press Complaints Commission that they were a breach of the prince’s privacy — not to say his privates. 
 
 
 
 Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, deflected any blame that might be cast on security guards traveling with Harry on his stateside vacation. 
 
 
 
 “Royal protection officers are there to protect him for security reasons; they are not there to regulate his life,” Hogan-Howe told the Telegraph of London. 
 
 Coleman-Rayner/Coleman-Rayner 
 
 The average Brit didn’t seem to blame Harry for his high jinks. “He’s a lad, for God’s sake,” Shirley Ashard, 59, told The Associated Press. 
 
 
 
 In a cheeky move to show the public the photos without actually publishing them, The Sun of London recreated the pictures using a Harry look-alike holding his genitals. The simulated photo appeared on Thursday’s front page with the headline, “Harry grabs the crown jewels.” 
 
 
 
 While the British press was deprived of running the shots, Brits in America who’ve seen them got a chuckle at Harry’s expense. 
 
 
 
 “That’s not a royal penis!” quipped Brit Lisa Vanderpump — star of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” — when shown the photos by TMZ. 
 
 RELATED: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO SHOWS PRINCE HARRY RACING RYAN LOCHTE IN LAS VEGAS POOL AT 3 A.M. 
 
 “I need a magnifying glass to see that. Hold on, let me get my glasses,” Vanderpump joked. 
 
 
 
 The photos were shot on the the same wild weekend that saw Harry take on U.S. Olympic swimming champ Ryan Lochte in a boozy impromptu race in a Vegas hotel pool overflowing with bikini-clad women. 
 
 
 
 As in his game of strip billiards, Harry lost the race. 
 
 
 
 Prince Harry and Ryan Lochte swimming at a pool party in Las Vegas. Bill Bramhall 
 
 abartkewicz@nydailynews.com ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Prince Harry was on a private break with friends over the weekend 
 
 St James's Palace has confirmed it contacted the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over the possible use of naked photos of Prince Harry. 
 
 The palace had heard a number of UK newspapers were considering using them, a spokesman said. Not one has done so. 
 
 It believed publication of the photos - taken in a Las Vegas hotel room - would constitute an invasion of privacy. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Met Police have said they will not discuss "matters of protection" after concerns were raised. 
 
 Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe was asked on Wednesday about the images and the role of the prince's protection officers - which are provided by the Met - and said: "Protection officers are there to protect him for security reasons, they are not there to regulate his life." 
 
 'Private hotel' 
 
 Prince Harry, 27, is believed to be back in the UK after pictures of him and a young woman naked in a Las Vegas hotel room appeared on US gossip website TMZ. 
 
 The photos are believed to have been taken on a camera phone last Friday when the prince was on a private weekend break with friends. 
 
 St James's Palace confirmed the prince is in the photos and that it contacted the PCC on Wednesday because it had concerns about his privacy being intruded upon, in breach of the editors' code of practice. 
 
 A PCC spokesman said there was no formal complaint but confirmed St James's Palace contacted the regulatory body so it could raise concerns with editors. 
 
 "They thought Prince Harry had a reasonable right to privacy, being in a private hotel," the spokesman said. 
 
 TMZ reported Harry had been pictured in a group playing "strip billiards". 
 
 The pictures have been picked up by much of the US media but no British newspaper has published them, although they have appeared on a political blog in the UK and the Sun mocked up an image of one of them on its front page. 
 
 On Wednesday evening they appeared on Scottish media and marketing website, the Drum, alongside an opinion piece from the editor saying "decisions not to publish, despite the self-evident news value, are always bad decisions". 
 
 Press 'neutered' 
 
 One ex-editor said the decision by UK newspapers not to use the photos showed the Leveson Inquiry had "neutered" the press. 
 
 The inquiry, which is looking at press standards and the relationship between journalists and those in power, was launched last year in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World. 
 
 Former News of the World executive editor Neil Wallis told the BBC that before the Leveson Inquiry he would have published the pictures because it was in the public interest, but the inquiry had had an adverse effect on the press. 
 
 Analysis British papers may not have printed the pictures of Prince Harry, but they have reported the furore in full detail - and told readers where they can find the photos, which first surfaced on the TMZ entertainment website in the US. In the past, some papers would have happily countered this with claims that the story was in the public interest, pointing out the risk posed to the prince's security. But for the moment, newspapers are playing safe, waiting for Leveson. That has not stopped them discussing the full implications of Prince Harry's behaviour. It's a salutory reminder of the difficulty for Lord Justice Leveson in devising a tighter form of press regulation for the UK in a world where social media and the internet respect no boundaries. Whatever the Leveson Report says when it is published this autumn, it is certain to spark a new round of arguments about what sort of a press - and regulation - the UK wants. 
 
 "He is third in line to the throne, he's been on the world stage for weeks and weeks, he is supposedly surrounded by police security officers," he said. 
 
 But media lawyer Mark Stephens said editors realised they had to comply with the wishes of St James's Palace. 
 
 "It's because they were asked not to by the PCC and they accepted it was probably the better way to go," he said. 
 
 He added that a number of high profile court cases involving celebrities had changed the way the press handle privacy. 
 
 Media lawyer Callum Galbraith said the press would have weighed up the prince's privacy rights, against the media's right to publish, before using the pictures. 
 
 Mr Galbraith said: "The photos appear to have been taken in the most private of circumstances. Naked photos are, of course, inherently private. 
 
 "In addition, it is likely that the prince did not consent to the taking of photos. 
 
 "The suggestion that the Leveson Inquiry may be responsible for the UK media not publishing these photos is unfair and inaccurate. The media would always be cautious of such photos." 
 
 Former royal protection officer Ken Wharfe described the incident as a setback for the prince, undermining the charitable work and his military career. 
 
 BBC media correspondent Torin Douglas said it was a "reminder of the difficulty for Lord Justice Leveson in devising a tighter form of press regulation for the UK, in a world where social media and the internet respect no boundaries". 
 
 Harry's antics: Reaction elsewhere on the web 
 
 "There has never been a better time for the third in line to the throne to be photographed naked, with naked company, in a Las Vegas hotel room," said a Times leader, pointing out that Harry's recent "triumphant" Caribbean tour and "dutiful but joyful turn" at the Olympic Games earned him "a special place in the nation's heart". 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Neil Wallis: "[In the] post-Leveson era newspaper editors are simply scared of their own shadow" 
 
 But he will need to tread carefully in the future. "It is a testament to his sheer likeability that Britain will most likely greet his latest, literal, revelations with a grin and an indulgent shrug. If he's still naked at 50, things may be different." 
 
 The Daily Mirror's Alison Phillips wrote: "Unlike the royal stuffed shirts, he seems genuine and a bit of a laugh. Which is why it was so disappointing when his aides called in lawyers to ban the pictures from UK newspapers - even though they're being published in Ireland." 
 
 Prince Harry "wasn't hurting anyone", she said, and he had "done us proud recently". Perhaps his aides needed to "follow his example and just chill out". 
 
 But for the Daily Mail's Amanda Platell, his recent achievements and image clean-up have made the Las Vegas scenes "so disappointing and genuinely shocking". 
 
 The prince should have known better, she said, and questioned why no courtier or police protection officer stepped in.
– Let the royal fallout begin. Prince Harry has flown back to London to an angry queen after the frisky party boy stripped in his Las Vegas hotel suite, and photos ended up in the US press, reports the New York Daily News. The royal family was scrambling yesterday to do damage control, and contacted the Press Complaints Commission in London in a bid to block publication of the shots—which appeared to be enough to keep them out of British newspapers, reports the BBC. Because the game of strip billiards took place in Harry's $8,000-a-night VIP suite, the 27-year-old prince had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and publication of the photos could be an illegal invasion of privacy under British law. It's not clear who took the photos of a naked Harry cupping his genitals, and giving a nude young woman a bear hug. TMZ reportedly purchased the photos for $15,000. The antics have raised serious questions about Harry's judgement and his ability to effectively serve as a representative of the queen, reports the Telegraph. They've also hurt his image in the British military. He'll likely get a dressing down by superiors, and may be officially censured. Military codes of conduct require officers to maintain high standards of professionalism "both on and off operations." Says a military source: "His commanding officer will probably have a word, but I imagine his family might be even more annoyed at his stupidity."