Prince Harry landed back in the UK tonight and appeared to confirm he had killed during his tour of duty, and added that he was 'longing' to catch up with William and Kate 'behind closed doors' in a reunion to which the media 'aren't invited'.

His loathing of the press was obvious when he openly scoffed at a reporter who asked him whether the impending birth had caused him to 'reflect on his own destiny' by bumping him down the order of succession.

During a five minute interview at RAF Brize Norton he also gave a far more diplomatic answer when asked if he had 'killed Taliban' on duty, saying he was just doing his job. There was no repetition of the crass comments made in a BBC documentary earlier this week which was filmed in Afghanistan when he compared warfare to computer games. and twice said he operated around the principle, "Take a life to save a life."

After landing at the RAF base in Oxfordshire, he was told that headlines had quoted him saying he killed Taliban insurgents and was asked: "Is that what happened?"

He said, in comments video-recorded by the Daily Telegraph “Is that what happened? For the thousands of guys that are on operations at the moment we’re continuing to try and do a job, a job for ourselves, a job for the guys left and right of us, and from my point of view especially, for the guys on the ground. We are supporting the Afghan people, supporting the Afghan army, the way things are going is fantastic, the difference between 2006 and now is absolutely fantastic. You get asked to do things that you would expect to do wearing this uniform and that’s as simple as that really.”

As part of his deal with the media, he also spoke to Sky News. When asked if he was looking forward to getting back to normal, he said: "I don't know what normal is anymore and never really have done. There's nothing normal about what we've doing for the last four and a half months. In the last day that I was there a seven-year-old girl got shot down by insurgents. Normality is a very ambiguous thing. I will continue being myself. I will enjoy being a soldier."