If anyone visiting Prince Charles' home had opened the right door at just the right time, they may have been greeted with an unusual sight: the Prince of Wales laying face flat on the floor, eyes closed and ears perked in concentration.

He was, of course, trying to eavesdrop on some of the 30,000 annual tourists who pay 15 pounds each to tour his 900-acre royal estate in Gloucestershire.

That habit is just one of some curious admissions the royal makes in a new BBC documentary.

"I have eavesdropped on what visitors have said," the prince tells the BBC interviewer. "When they're going 'round outside the windows. Sometimes you've got to lie on the floor."

Charles also talks about speaking with the trees and plants in his garden.

"I happily talk to the plants and trees, and listen to them. I think it's absolutely crucial," the prince says. "Everything I've done here, it's like almost with your children. Every tree has a meaning for me."

For the man who would be king, the disclosures could be a little off putting. But not for Katie Nicholl, author of the upcoming book "William and Harry."

"He is slightly eccentric, but I think eccentric people make the world go 'round and make it a lot more fun," Nicholl told "Good Morning America."

Prince Charles was an organic pioneer long before it was hip.

"I got a lot of flak for a lot of things," Charles says in the documentary. "I mean, potty this, potty that, loony this, loony that."

But far from looney, the prince says speaking to the plants keeps him "relatively sane," according to the UK Press Association.

The full documentary is set to air on BBC 2 on Thursday at 8 p.m. local time.

Until then, Nicholl warns, "As Charles said, he does properly eavesdrop, so do mind one's words."

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/prince-charles-eavesdrops-tourists-speaks-plants/story?id=11679656

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Yes thankfully you have precedent for this.  Charles III will be locked up with his orchard, and Harry reigns as Prince Regent

well in the interests of history there's this fairly right-wing movement called the Tea Party that wants to stop borrowing and spending and legislating everything, and it calls itself teh Tea Party after the Revolutionary group of 1775 Boston, and they wave the old "dont tread on me" rattlesnake flags of that Revolution, and they put about 1 million people in the capital t oprotest

and they are picking fairly right wing people to run in the 2010 elections on the Republican ticket

and they have upset old-school Republicans that want to compromise a bit to win votes of middle people.

None more so than in the State of Delaware

this woman Christine ODonnell was GOP candidate for senate in 2008 against Joe Biden

Biden won.  But he also got elected VP.  So now they are electing his replacement.  And the GOP had a primary to determine who got to be Republican candidate this time.  And the GOP party heads wanted a Congressman named Mike castle to win it because he was more "moderate" and the Tea Party candidate was Christine ODonnell and she beat him by 3%

so a lot of Republican insiders came out and said she was crazy, she opposed masturbation as a sin and owed back taxes and hasnt had a job in a while

and a lot of right wingers like Rush Limbaugh said "so what, she was good enough in 2008 wasnt she"

now it turns out that she did Bill Maher's show in 1999 and he kept the tapes, whcih is really a whole other story in itself, and she admitted to being a kook who dated a Satanist.

So the Republican insiders said "see we told you" and the right wingers say "so what" and the Republcians say "you go elect then if you think she can win" and the right wing says "so you want a Democrat to win?"  and the Republicans say "no but you screwed it up for everybody, we could have had a majority and the chairmanships" and the right wing says "yeah but you are useless liars with no balls, you screwed it up since 2004 and you aren't any better than Democrats" and the Republicans say "that's crazy talk, you have to see that Obama is the AntiChrist and must be stopped with the lesser evil" and the right wing says "you lost no matter how it turns out in Delaware and be damned to you, if you're the cure we prefer the disease for a while longer'

so that is how democracy is supposed to work. I hope the afghans are taking notes.