Britain’s Prince William exchanged "military banter" with an injured patient whilst on duty with the East Anglian Air Ambulance service.
The 33-year-old royal shared a joke with Jim Schembri, an ex-soldier, who he was helping to treat after Jim was crushed by a falling branch when he was pruning a tree.
Jim recalled: "I remember the helicopter landing and the doctor talking to me and someone was supporting my head. He asked me if I was a ‘bootneck’ as he had spotted a Royal Marines charity band on my arm. Then he said, ‘You’ve got an ex-army air corp working on you.
"I still didn’t twig that it was Prince William and we joked around, exchanging military banter for about half an hour. When they loaded me into the helicopter I said ‘William had better not be flying this’ and he said ‘I’ve been holding your head for the last half an hour.’ I was totally shocked."
And Jim went on to praise the Prince for "doing a normal person’s job".
He added to The Sun newspaper: "It’s amazing that he is the future King of England but at the end of the day he is doing a normal person’s job and working as part of a team.
"He was comforting me the whole time and telling me exactly what he was doing. He had a very calm demeanour and there was no flapping. He was extremely good at his job. I jokingly asked him to come and visit me in hospital and he laughed, we just had a good banter."
Britain’s Prince William’s ‘military banter’
