Prince Harry revealed his desire for fatherhood three years ago on last trip to New Zealand

Prince Harry made no secret of his desire to start a family long before he met Meghan Markle.

Even as a twenty-something larking about with AIDS orphans in Africa there was a sense that this was a clucky prince, keen to settle down and start a family.

He was just 25 and had finished his first tour of Afghanistan when he told me he was “obsessed with children”.

During an interview at a visit to a children’s hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados he revealed, with typical candour: “No matter how old I am I will always have the kid inside me.

“I’m obsessed with children. I don’t know if they like me but you know they are great fun and you can never really say no to them.”

Asked if he was conscious of taking after his mother, Harry replied: “I don’t know if I can follow in her footsteps but William and I will always try to achieve what she achieved in the short space of time that she did.

“Like mother like son, like father like son. Both she and our father, but her especially I suppose, had that motherly touch to young children.”

Reflecting on his work with Sentebale, the children’s charity he set up in Lesotho in memory of his mother, he added: “Especially in places like this and in Africa, I love the way the kids are so happy and so grateful for the small things in life. You can’t fail but get this huge fulfilment and happiness from spending some time with children.

“I will always try to stick with working with children as long as I can because I associate with them more.”

News of Meghan’s pregnancy means he has finally got what he has always longed for- the prospect of a family of his own.

Indeed much of the frustration he felt over his previous failed relationships with Chelsy Davy, and more recently Cressida Bonas was that his chequered love life denied him the chance to become a young father.

He had hoped to emulate his mother, who was 20 when she had William and brought the princes up in her twenties and thirties.

He frequently discussed his predicament with friends, joking: “If only I could become a father without getting married!”

During a tour of New Zealand in 2015 he spoke of his desire to settle down.

Aged 30, he said he was waiting for the right moment – and the right woman – to come along.

“There come times when you think now is the time to settle down, or now is not, whatever way it is, but I don’t think you can force these things; it will happen when it’s going to happen,” he told Sky News.

“Of course, I would love to have kids right now,” he said. “But there’s a process that one has to go through.” Speaking of how he would love to have someone alongside him on tours, he added: “Hopefully I’m doing all right by myself,” he said.

“It would be great to have someone else next to me to share the pressure. But, you know, time will come and whatever happens, happens.”

Having had to play gooseberry to William and Kate between his break up from Bonas in 2014 and meeting Meghan in the spring of 2016, Harry watched with increasing admiration - and a small degree of envy- as his brother settled into married life as a father of three.

Of the brothers, Harry was always the child-friendly of the two, taking great delight in causing mischief with his younger cousins, and later his godchildren, niece and nephews.

And as neighbours at Kensington Palace, the Sussexes very much wanted their children to be close in age to the Cambridges.

Meghan’s baby is due in Spring, meaning he or she will be just a year younger than Prince Louis.