Published by TMZ, the grainy photos — which appear to have been taken on a camera phone — show the prince in what the celebrity news site claims is a game of “strip billiards” at his VIP suite at the Wynn Resort, Las Vegas.

In one of the photos, Harry is seen covering his crotch while an unknown female, also dressed in her birthday suit, stands behind him.

While his elder brother William prepares to be the future King of Britain, Harry has gained a reputation as something of a party animal, extending back to 2002, when the then 17-year-old prince was sent to a drug rehab clinic for a day by his father, after admitting to smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol while underage.

This certainly wouldn’t be the first time the young royal has found himself caught on the wrong side of a camera on a night out. In 2005, Harry was famously pictured on the front page of British tabloid the Sun, under the headline “Harry the Nazi,” wearing Nazi Afrika Korps uniform — adorned with a red swastika armband — to a friend’s fancy dress party.

One year previously, he got into a scuffle with a photographer outside a London nightclub.

More recently, however, Harry has attempted to distance himself from his image as a playboy prince. He joined the British Army in 2005, served a stint in Afghanistan and has now risen to the rank of Captain in the Army Air Corps. In March, he engaged his first solo royal tour, visiting the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil and Jamaica, as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, and served as the Royal Family’s representative at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics.

Ingrid Seward, royal biographer and editor of Majesty magazine, has suggested that the apparent faux pas could, in fact, work in Prince Harry’s favor. She told the Daily Telegraph: “We can stand on our lofty moral high ground and say, ‘how can he be so stupid and put himself in such a position’ but it is that buffoonery in him that we all love.

“I don’t think it will damage the Royal Family at all,” Seward said. “He’s the Boris Johnson of the Royal Family.”