Seven things you never knew about Prince Harry

Prince Harry will be in Dubai today to attend a dinner at the JW Marriott to raise funds for Sentebale, a non-profit organisation he co-founded to help African children with HIV and Aids. As the UAE prepares for his visit, we put together a list of things we never knew about Captain Wales.

He is proud of his PlayStation skills

Dodi Al Fayed’s sister Camilla said she spent the summer of 1997 battling it out on the games console with Harry and his brother at the games room in Kensington Palace, and Harry proclaimed himself “the king of Sonic the Hedgehog”.

He loves reality TV

The former Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden said that when she chatted to Harry at an event at Buckingham Palace, he admitted he sets his TV to record her hit TV show. He also staged a gig at Buckingham Palace in 2011 with the drum ‘n’ bass DJ Goldie for the three-part BBC reality show Goldie’s Band – By Royal Appointment, about a mission to find youngsters with “raw musical talent”.

He spent 20 hours in a giant freezer

In September, Harry spent 20 hours in a cold chamber as part of his training for a race to the South Pole. Next month, he will race with four teammates, all physically challenged after sustaining injuries in Afghanistan, on a 321-kilometre expedition through Antarctica, racing against groups from the US and the Commonwealth.

He has a stalker

Harry was followed to Washington DC and South Africa by a Toronto-based Chinese woman, Wen Qi, who was arrested in May this year after trying to sneak into a polo club where Prince Harry was playing a charity match.

He is a chart-topping musician

Gary Barlow convinced the prince to play the tambourine on the Diamond Jubilee single Sing, which went on to top the UK charts and raised more than half a million pounds for the Queen’s Jubilee charities.

Harry regularly attends music festivals such as Womad, Wireless and Glastonbury in the UK. Will he make it to Dubai’s Sandance festival on Friday?

He is a sci-fi geek

The prince is a big fan of the US cult sci-fi show Star Trek and wants to venture out himself by training with Nasa to become the first British royal to go into outer space. According to UK media reports, Harry begged his pal Sam Branson to ask his father, the Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson, to save him a seat on the first Virgin Galactic flight.

Harry and his girlfriend Cressida Bonas are distant cousins

Both descend from the Curzon line – Cressida through her mother, Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, and Harry through his mother, Princess Diana, whose own grandmother was the granddaughter of Lady Mary Anna Curzon. After almost two years of dating, the UK press rumour mill has been abuzz with speculation that Harry will propose to her by the end of the year. But following the birth of his nephew George in August, Harry confessed “the pressure is off”.

artslife@thenational.ae

Gender pay parity on track in the UAE

The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.

"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."

Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.

"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.

As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.