American girls fall for Harry marriage prank

This article originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph, March 28, 2014

If something seems too good to be true, is usually is. The maxim appears to have been lost, however, on a dozen gullible young Americans who were duped into thinking Prince Harry wanted to date them as part of an elaborate prank set up by a US reality TV show. The bachelor girls were flown to Englefield Estate in Berkshire for a Fox TV programme called I Wanna Marry Harry, which will be shown in the US in May.

They believed they were competing for the affections of the fourth in line to the throne, when in fact, they were trying to impress Matthew Hicks, an Englishman who is a professional Prince Harry lookalike.

The Englefield Estate is the home of Richard Benyon, the Conservative MP for Newbury. He said: “There was a TV programme for US TV filmed here last year, but I can’t comment on it.”