Prince Emanuele Filiberto, the grandson of Italy’s last king, has revealed how he hired a prostitute to teach him how to have sex with his first girlfriend.

The 52 year-old prince from the deposed House of Savoy said he had always felt awkward about sex and had relied on a prostitute to show him what to do as a young man.

“I had a girlfriend and I wanted to make love with her, but I didn’t know how to do it,” the prince told Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “So I had a prostitute teach me how to do it.

“It became clear to me very quickly.”

The House of Savoy provided Italy’s Kings from unification in the 19th century to the abolition of the monarchy in a referendum in 1946 but they have never given up hope of the institution being restored in Italy.