Prince Charles attempted to be a smoker

Prince Charles tried smoking when he was 11.

The heir to the British throne rebelled as a young boy and decided he would start smoking tobacco, but after a few attempts realized it wasn’t a vice for him.

The prince told about his escapade during a visit to celebrate the work of nurses at Clarence House in London.

Paul Watson, a nurse and secondary school teacher, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: ”There was a few of us that are respiratory nurses and he asked whether we deal with a lot of smokers.

”He said ‘I gave up at 11 when I had a few cigarettes behind a chicken coop’. I believe it was tongue in cheek.”

The 64-year-old prince would have been at Cheam Preparatory School in Berkshire, near London when he tried smoking, before being sent to Gordonstoun school in North-East Scotland.

In an address before the event – attended by nominees and winners of Nursing Times magazine’s annual awards show – the prince thanked them for all the hard work.

He wrote in the publication: ”In general, quite apart from the medical expertise that nursing staff provide on a daily and nightly basis, the reassurance and simple human kindness that they can also dispense is, I believe, vital and must surely impact positively on the recovery of individuals.

”The nominees I have mentioned are just a few of the many thousands of nurses who understand the value of the ‘human touch’ and who are committed to working day in, day out, in hospitals and in the community, to give patients, carers and families exceptional care.

”It strikes me that we must support them in their work and recognize their contribution however we can. It is impossible to express the value of the care they give, often when people are at their most vulnerable, and I can only congratulate them on all their achievements.”

The prince is a patron of more than 30 healthcare organizations and works closely with many hospitals.