All hail the conquering hero...-ish. Why do I get the feeling this all has a vague whiff of propaganda?

The war in Afghanistan has been seen to be spiralling out of control so how better to shore up backing than to have a Royal out there?

Prince Harry has made the headlines for indulging in the usual round of yahoo South Kensington rich kids getting pissed and falling out of clubs so how better to give him a new media profile as the ever-smiling grunt on the frontline?

For all this the media agreed to a reporting ban to purportedly protect him and his fellow soldiers - and here's the good bit... so they could then have full access to him for photo shoots and footage of him playing soldiers.

There's a bit of a furore over the willingness over our free press to happily play along with this but more annoyingly is this now gives a Royal seal of approval to this rather dodgy tour of duty... 88 soldiers have been killed there since 2001.

I suspect this media love-in however won't last too long as Action Ginger said in a BBC interview "I generally don't like England that much and, you know, it's nice to be away from all the Press and the papers and all the general shite that they write"

Or don't write about...