Chippendales: Harry not likely to be guest

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LONDON, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- A Chippendales spokesman told United Press International he doubted Britain's Prince Harry would be a guest host with the Las Vegas male erotic dance troupe.

The company, which performs at Las Vegas' Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, reached out to people connected with Harry Thursday to let them know of its interest, Michael Caprio told UPI.

The group, known for its dancers' distinctive upper-body costume of a bowtie and shirt cuffs worn on an otherwise bare torso, "went through a contact to get a PR contact with the royal family," Caprio said.

"We don't know if it's direct access to him," Caprio said. "Our hopes are high," he said.

When asked by UPI if Chippendales' hopes were really high, he stressed the word "our" in repeating "our hopes are high," then added, "I doubt it's going to happen."

Harry is back in London.

U.S. gossip Web site TMZ initially reported the company's Las Vegas troupe reached out to the royalty "to gauge his interest in being our next guest host."

A high-profile British publicist told the BBC Friday "two different" American women approached him separately Thursday to say they had photos of Prince Harry at his VIP suite the night of the naked party.

Max Clifford -- the highest-profile and best-known publicist in Britain, who is sometimes controversial for representing unpopular clients -- said he turned them down.

"Two people at that party approached me [to ask] would I represent them and would I sell their photos, and I said no," he told the BBC in a phone interview.

"Because in any situation, where people approach me -- and I never approach them, whether it's for PR representation or anything like this -- I've got to justify it to myself," he told the network. "To me, I couldn't do that."

He didn't say if he knew if the women intended to approach other publicists.

The nude cellphone photos of Harry's "strip pool" party at the five-star Encore Las Vegas luxury resort, casino and hotel were published in Britain Friday in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun.

The newspaper, with the largest circulation of any British daily, was the only one in England to publish the grainy photos, in defiance of a royal family move to keep them out of the printed press, citing Harry's privacy rights in his hotel suite.

The Sun said it ran the photos in the interest of press freedom.

"One might have thought the News Corp chief would have been careful to choose a noble cause before mounting the white charger of unfettered expression," Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens wrote. "Perhaps a story of corruption and coverup in Whitehall [British government administrative offices]? A new expenses scandal at Westminster [Parliament]? Or maybe a minister fallen prey to a Russian honeytrap?

"Not a bit of it. Mr Murdoch is championing the right of his newspapers to publish photographs of Prince Harry's embarrassing but harmless antics with a bunch of friends in a Las Vegas hotel room," Stephens wrote. "The fourth estate can only be truly free, it seems, if The Sun is permitted to print photographs of the prince's naked bum."