Just to keep the memories of the Queens visit going, her husband, Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, who has become renowned for his off the wall comments over the years, will be 90 years of age on June 10th
The reality is everybody loves him because although his comments may not be helpful in diplomatic circles, like the bold faced four year old telling it as it is at the top of his voice, it affords us an opportunity to laugh while feigning shock horror
Here are some of the better ones…………
“In education, if in nothing else, the Scotsman knows what is best for him. Indeed, only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.” Said when he was made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in November 1953.
“So you’re responsible for the kind of crap Channel Four produces!” Speaking to then chairman of the channel, Michael Bishop, in 1962.
“It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons” On being shown “primitive” Ethiopian art in 1965.
While on an official visit to China in 1986 he told a group of British exchange students staying in the city of Xian: “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
“You’re not wearing mink knickers, are you?” Philip charms fashion writer Serena French at a World Wildlife Fund gathering in 1993.
Speaking to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, in 1995 he asked: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
He told a 1986 meeting of the World Wildlife Fund: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
During the 1981 recession he mused: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”
Were you here in the bad old days? … That’s why you can’t read and write then!” To parents during a visit to Fir Vale Comprehensive School in Sheffield, which had suffered poor academic reputation.
When accepting a figurine from a woman during a visit to Kenya in 1984 he asked: “You are a woman aren’t you?”
The Duke asked a British student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea in 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”
To a British tourist in Hungary in 1993 he quipped: “You can’t have been here that long — you haven’t got a pot belly.”
“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”, he asked an islander in the Cayman Islands in 1994.
Following the 1996 Dunblane massacre, he questioned the need for a firearms ban: “If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?”
“Reichskanzler.” Prince Philip used Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl during a speech in Hanover in 1997.
“What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.” Response to a comment at a small-business lunch about how difficult it is in Britain to get rich.
In 1999 in Cardiff he told children from the British Deaf Association, who were standing by a Caribbean steel band: “If you’re near that music it’s no wonder you’re deaf”.
And what exotic part of the world do you come from?” Asked in 1999 of Tory politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, whose parents are Jamaican. He replied: “Birmingham.”
People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” In 2000.
I wish he’d turn the microphone off!” The Prince expresses his opinion of Elton John’s performance at the 73rd Royal Variety Show, 2001.
“Do people trip over you?” Meeting a wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident in 2002
While touring a factory near Edinburgh in 2002 he said a fuse box was so crude it “looked as though it had been put in by an Indian”.
Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?” To a wheelchair-bound Susan Edwards, and her guide dog Natalie in 2002.
To Australian Aborigines during a visit to Australia in 2002 he asked: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
There’s a lot of your family in tonight.” After glancing at business chief Atul Patel’s name badge during a 2009 Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians to meet the Royal couple.
In 2010 on asking a female Sea Cadet what she did for a living, and being told that she worked in a nightclub (as a barmaid), the Duke asked “Is it a strip club?” Observing her surprise he dismissed the suggestion saying that it was “probably too cold for that anyway”.
That’s a nice tie… Do you have any knickers in that material?” Discussing the tartan designed for the Papal visit with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year.
