Wise Words From Prince Philip - Part 1
The Duke's most infamous gaffe came in 1986 when he told a British student in China: ‘If you stay here much longer you’ll be slitty-eyed’
‘I declare this thing open, whatever it is.’ During a visit to Canada in 1969.
‘It looks like a tart’s bedroom,’ — on seeing plans for the Duke and Duchess of York’s house at Sunninghill Park in 1988.
To a driving instructor in Scotland, during a 1995 walkabout: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?’
Pointing at an old-fashioned fusebox in a factory near Edinburgh in 1999: ‘It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.’
In Kenya, in 1984, after accepting a small gift from a local woman: ‘You are a woman, aren’t you?’
In Australia, in 1992, when asked to stroke a Koala bear: ‘Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.’
‘You can’t have been here that long, you haven’t got a pot belly’ — to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, in 1993.
‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’ — to a resident of the Cayman Islands in 1994.
At a tree-planting ceremony in Hyde Park in 2011, the Queen met 16-year-old Army cadet Stephen Menary, who lost an arm and most of his sight in an IRA bomb attack. When the Queen asked him how much he could see, Philip interjected: ‘Not a lot, judging by the tie he’s wearing.’
‘You managed not to get eaten, then?’ — to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea in 1998.
‘I wish he’d turn the microphone off’ — muttered at the Royal Variety Performance as he watched Sir Elton John perform, 2001.
‘You look like a suicide bomber,’ to a young female officer wearing a bullet-proof vest on Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, in 2002.
To young designer Stephen Judge in July 2009: ‘Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?’
Addressing multi-ethnic Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity, who are from London, in 2009: ‘Are you all one family?’
‘Children go to school because their parents don’t want them in the house’ — prompting giggles from Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban after campaigning for the right of girls to go to school without fear — October 2013.
To the Queen at her coronation: ‘Where did you get that hat?’
On Princess Anne: ‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she’s not interested.’
To disabled comedian Adam Hills, who has a prosthetic foot, in 2009: ‘You could smuggle a bottle of gin out of the country in that.’
He told Paraguay’s dictator General Alfredo Stroessner: ‘It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.’
Speaking to singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance: ‘What do you gargle with, pebbles?’
In 2010 he asked disabled mobility scooter rider David Miller, 60: ‘How many people have you knocked over this morning on that thing?’
After being told Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme at the film’s world premiere at the Albert Hall in 2002 he asked her: ‘Are we going to need ear plugs?’
In Ghana in 1999 he asked an MP: ‘How many members of Parliament do you have?’ When told 200, he replied: ‘That’s about the right number. We have 650 and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.’
In a state visit to Australia in 2002, the Prince asked Aborigines: 'Do you still throw spears at each other?'
Overheard in 2005 at Bristol University’s engineering facility, which had been closed so that he could officially open it: ‘It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this university.’
As he and the Queen walked down the aisle through a fog of holy smoke in a birthday service in a high church in 2004, he asked: ‘Is this a celebration or a cremation?’
After a meal of venison at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2008, Philip spotted a herd of deer in the grounds and asked the bursar: ‘How many of those *** did you have to shoot for lunch then?’
Then, on being told the supply had come from Kent he quipped: ‘Well, don’t tell Charles because he likes everyone to buy local!’