If you're going to have a King, I think Charles is about as good as you're likely to come up with. A sense of the absurd is pretty unusual among people in that kind of position, and pretty essential too.

I can't actually think of anyone who might conceivably get elected president in Britain having even a touch of that self-aware quality - I think it gets drummed out of them in the process of climbing the greasy pole. (And if you look across the Atlantic - Good Grief!)

Ideally I think I'd have the job filled by a purely symbolic figure - a horse, maybe. With Prince Charles perhaps having the job of looking after it, riding it on ceremonial occasions, and acting as its spokesman when necessary, for example when monstrous carbuncles are proposed.

I've been hunting around for a picture of the building in question - here is the only one I could find. (Third picture down the page.) Not the clearest of pictures, but I think enough to suggest what the prince was getting at.