Is Charles fit to be King? Maxwell McLeod, who was at Gordonstoun with

him, gives an emphatic answer.

TO everything there is a time.

Today it is my time for telling a story that I have always vowed I

would never tell. Not to family, not to friends, and above all else not

in a national newspaper. But there is a time.

I was, you see, at school with the Prince of Wales.

Working as a freelance journalist this is quite a commodity to have up

your sleeve for a rainy day. Over the years, on many a rainy day, I have

been offered hard cash for ''just a few wee stories''.

''Never, no never'' has been my reply, arguing with conviction that

there would never be a circumstance that would warrant such a breach of

trust.

But there is a time. Having read as much of the prurient rubbish in

the Sunday newspapers as I could stomach, I have decided that time has

come. I do so purely in the man's defence and with a specific request

that I do not get paid for this piece.

First, the facts. I was at Gordonstoun with Charles for perhaps 18

months.

He was a senior prefect living in a house a good two miles away from

mine. I was a wee nyaff four years his junior, so I can hardly claim a

deep intimacy. Indeed my entire knowledge of him is based on a few

conversations and a good deal of observation.

But I did sing in the same choir, act in the same plays, share the

same art studio and very quickly came to admire the man more than any

other and not only for his position.

Today I read and hear in every second house and howff that the boy

whom I so admired has become a man who is emotionally unstable,

cowardly, and incapable, a cold-blooded cheat, and unfit for the throne.

Try as I might I cannot begin to believe any of these accusations can

possibly be true of Charles. I would suggest that, unless a very major

change has taken place in the intervening 30 years, that the complete

converse is true and that he remains both supremely honourable and

brave.

The Charles I knew, no, observed would be better, was far from being

emotionally inept or indeed malleable. Indeed he was one of the most

emotionally together people I've ever met.

He was, though, above all an artist. Gifted as well as trained as a

cellist, trumpeter, actor and potter, he somehow managed to maintain a

quite extraordinary sensitivity in spite of an almost palpable pressure

from all around for him to become the mirror of his brusque and dogmatic

father.

Stories of him being bullied in his earlier years may or may not be

true -- I simply don't know, but the 18-year-old I observed was

certainly no ''broken'' victim but a relaxed and amusing individual.

What made him particularly attractive to my youthful eyes was his

individuality.

He simply refused to behave in the manner that might have been

expected of a king-to-be and absorbed the pressure with a humour and

iron resolve.

Today, 30 years on, even although I've never exchanged a word with the

man since those days, I find the suggestion absurd that such a person

could have in his thirtieth year been bullied into taking a bride.

I find it extraordinary that so few conversations in pubs and clubs

over the last weekend have attempted to celebrate his outstanding work

amongst the young, deprived, and ethnic minorities.

He is in my opinion a man who, against staggering odds, has somehow

managed to create an ambience in which it is perfectly possible that he

can bring off the seemingly impossible by taking the now broken House of

Windsor intact into the twenty-first century and using it for our common

good.

Not worthy of the throne?

He's the only man I know who is.