Prince of Wales- The British Train.

Bless poor old Princey, he gets a pretty rough deal. He's never appeared in Germany, or Japan, his whole existance anywhere else is a one-joke appearance to laugh at British Rail. Originally in London he was "The Advanced Passenger Train - The City of Milton Keynes" which in 1984 was a very amusing, topical joke. Basically, as I understand it, British Rail spent millions developing these very fancy new trains, very advanced, I think they leant into corners or something. Trouble is they hadn't accounted for the condition of the tracks, and so the very advanced trains all fell over! Millions of pounds wasted, so it became a running joke... When they took the show to Broadway, understandably no-one would get it, so they changed him to "The Prince Of Wales", allowing cheap jokes at the royal family instead. ho-hum. Usually the actor who plays Prince of Wales is onstage mostly as one of Greaseball's Gang. In fact, he only appears in the Princey costume for the entry of the Nationals until Coda Freight, then he's a race marshall/GB's Gang until the finale! In the UK tour, Princey is played by Adam Floyd, who is also one of the trick skaters, which leads to the rather incongruous image below of Princey mid backflip which takes place during Rolling Stock. Belts I have managed to acquire a few very old costume pieces from the london production, one of these is a "Milton Keynes" belt in a very poor condition. The simple, bold design did not change appreciably throught the london run.

ONSTAGE Princey

BACKSTAGE Princey