A man who went to school with the then Prince Charles recalled the moment the future King caught him smoking a Marlboro cigarette in the boiler room - but didn't tell teachers.
Richard Kumnick said Charles, then 17, was hailed a "hero" by fellow smokers at Geelong Grammar School in Australia where Charles spent two terms in 1966..
Charles saved the smokers at the school from being taken to the headmaster, Mr Hanley, and was lauded for it.
Speaking this week ahead of King Charles' Coronation, Mr Kumnick said: "It was a dark room on the side of our living quarters and I was having a Marlboro and he happened to pop into the boiler room.
“I don't know whether he called me Kumnick or not but he said, ‘I will have those thank you’.
“I was pleased that that was as far as it went, because if it had gone any further I would have ended up in Mr Hanley's office."
Mr Kumnick told 9News he preserved a "memento" of Charles along with cherished memories of his encounters with the gracious monarch.
He shared an anecdote about an incident where Charles went for a swift haircut and recounted how he managed to sneak into the barbershop afterwards to steal a "lock of Prince's hair" as a souvenir from the floor.
“The then Prince Charles was waiting to get his hair cut and I was waiting for his to be completed,” he continued.
“I noticed his hair drop onto the floor. It was all his because he was the first one to have is haircut.
"Well, I know he's reflected on it in later years, saying that he actually really loved it.
“I think he ended up staying longer than what was ultimately intended or initially intended, I should say."
Mr Kumnick thinks Charles will make a capable and effective King.
“Oh, I think he will been in the same vein as his mother,” Mr Kumnick said.
“He would be perfect. I'm a royalist big time. I didn't think the time would come. I thought, maybe Charles would be too old.”
