As the storm of scandal which has engulfed the royal family since the collapse of the Paul Burrell theft trial continues unabated, attention is focusing on the vast households employed by senior royals to look after every aspect of their personal and public lives, and their role in bringing about the current crisis.

It is the 85-strong court of Prince Charles that has emerged most seriously discredited - with a growing number of MPs demanding to know how he can justify such a large staff - at least one of whom is accused of "fencing" gifts.

Archaic



At the end of a year that was being heralded as a triumph for the reinvented, modernised, scaled-down royal family, the unedifying reality revealed to the public this week is of a strictly hierarchical, archaic institution that has sneaked into the 21st century, rife with bullying, bitching, backstabbing, and general bad behaviour, while the prince turned a blind eye and on occasion even aided and abetted some of the excesses.

In the end it might not be the rape tape allegations that do the most damage. What will the British public think of an institution, already fabulously wealthy, that has servants carry out the most menial of tasks while others hawk its unwanted silverware around various shops for a pocketful of tax-free fivers?

Charles's supporters make much of the fact that the prince does not receive money from the civil list. Instead, his twin households at St James's Palace and his Gloucestershire home, Highgrove, are financed by the lucrative estate of the Duchy of Cornwall, his birthright as the male heir to the throne. According to the duchy's latest accounts, filed in the House of Commons library, the estate made a profit of £6.9m for the year to March 31 2000, when it was valued at around £308m. The prince admits that he lives well on the profit - on which he voluntarily pays 40% tax - and saves little of it.

The biggest expenditure, according to the accounts, is the full-time domestic and office staff of around 85, whose duties range from handling contacts with the 400 organisations with whom the prince is involved, to answering the 300,000 letters he and his sons receive every year.

It his lavish domestic staff which has caused most consternation. Compared with George Smith's claims in last week's Mail on Sunday that he was raped by a member of the prince's staff, the revelation that he was one of five valets who accompanied the prince on a trip to Egypt may not have registered high on the shock scale. The number of valets has since been reduced to four - two senior, two assistant - in the spirit of royal cuts, but the central concern remains: why exactly does one man need so many people to help him get dressed? According to Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, the answer can be found in Charles's fondness for being fussed over.

The prince often changes his clothes five times a day. The discarded outfits, including £2,000 bespoke suits and handmade Turnbull and Asser shirts, are left strewn across the floor for one of the valets to pick up. It is then their job to make sure the clothes are washed and returned to the correct place in his mahogany wardrobes. Wherever he is in the world, Charles demands that at least one of the senior valets or two of the assistants are available around the clock to prepare his wardrobe.

Picking up his clothes from the floor is not the only menial task his staff are expected to perform. It emerged this week that the prince even gets one of his valets to squeeze his toothpaste on to his toothbrush (from a crested silver dispenser), while one of the more bizarre facts to emerge from the Paul Burrell theft trial was that when the prince broke his arm he even got his then head valet, Michael Fawcett, to hold his specimen bottle.

Unease



It is Mr Fawcett, since promoted to "personal consultant" to the prince, who has been causing most unease for St James's Palace. "I can do without just about anyone, except for Michael," Prince Charles is said to have told a friend. At an employment tribunal where former aide Elizabeth Burgess alleged she was the victim of racial and sexual discrimination from Mr Fawcett, she claimed that she had been advised not to bother complaining because Charles "adored" Mr Fawcett. Camilla Parker Bowles is understood to be a similarly enthusiastic fan.

Now Mr Fawcett has been accused of selling gifts given to the prince for cash, and keeping a cut. It has been claimed that as much as £100,000 as year has been added to Prince Charles's coffers as a result. So adept had he become at offloading unwanted goods - often, it is said, at shops holding the royal warrant - he became known as Fawcett the Fence. Sir Michael Peat, the prince's private secretary and the man heading the review of the fallout from the Burrell trial, has promised to investigate the allegations.

Charles does not limit his generosity to himself. Since she was publicly unveiled as the prince's partner, Mrs Parker Bowles has enjoyed a lifestyle, and wardrobe. While once her appearances required nothing more elaborate than old jodhpurs and green wellies, she now dresses in designer gowns - Valentino, Versace and Oscar de la Renta - and her clothing tab, picked up by Charles, has escalated accordingly. He also pays for the lease of a Vauxhall Omega and a chauffeur for her.

The Queen is reported to believe that the "amount of kit and servants he takes around is grotesque." But Her Majesty's household is no less extravagant. Last Christmas, during separate trips to Sandringham, Charles took three butlers, the Queen 11; he took four chefs, his mother 12.

The Queen also takes up to 50 staff on foreign trips, according to a report from the Commons public accounts committee on royal travel, published in July. After the death of the Queen Mother, it emerged that she had employed a massive household too, including a watchman to sit outside her bedroom door every night as she slept.

This 19th century-style entourage may not last much longer. MPs are calling for parliament to take a closer look at the size of the staff, and a pared-down House of Windsor is likely to be the most immediate consequence of the Burrell affair. "Trimming down the households would be a start," said Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West. "Why anybody in this day and age needs that number of servants is completely beyond me. Even the president of the United States makes his own breakfast."