How Prince Harry’s Party Boy Image Started, According to a Royal Author and Expert

Before he was known for devoting his time to his growing family and philanthropic work, Prince Harry had a very different reputation, as something of a notorious party boy.

Prince Harry's party boy persona began when he was still attending Eton, where, as the Daily Mail reports, he was spotted partying at a rooftop bar in London just a few months before he was due to sit for his A Levels.

In the early days of Harry's Party Boy Era, the young royal had his "wrists slapped" as those around him tried to push him away from partying and toward studying harder for his exams, according to royal expert and author Katie Nicholl, who met Harry at the Kensington Roof Gardens when he was just 18 years old.

"I witnessed Harry's partying first hand that spring. I was a young show business reporter at the time for the Mail on Sunday and happened to be covering an event at the Kensington Roof Gardens," Nicholl wrote of the encounter in her royal biography The Making of a Royal Romance (per the Daily Mail). "I had gone outside onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air when Harry suddenly emerged from the VIP room."

According to the Daily Mail's recounting of the story, Harry then signaled for Nicholl to join him as he "tried to light a cigarette in the wind."

"His protection officers were seated at a coffee table at the far end of the room while Harry sat on the floor surrounded by eight pretty girls all clinging to his every word," Nicholl explains in the book. "One of his friends fetched me a glass of champagne while Harry held court."

Nicholl went on to say that Harry's laidback attitude toward toward his studies—which she says he "only mentioned in passing"— was increasingly obvious (and scrutinized in the press) in the weeks leading up to his exams.

"It seemed that no matter how many times he had his wrists slapped, Harry would not learn," Nicholl wrote of the time when Harry was cultivating his "party boy" rep.

Harry also touched on his partying during his school days in his memoir Spare.

"I took every cig offered me, and in the same automatic, unthinking way, I soon graduated to weed," he candidly explained.

The royal even went so far as to describe the way he and his friends pulled off their rule-breaking smoke breaks, writing: "Smoker straddled the loo beside the window, second boy leaned against the basin, third and fourth boys sat in the empty bath, legs dangling over, waiting their turns."