The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
The gaffes that landed the prince in hot water
Prince Philip was never afraid to speak his mind. But some of his public pronouncements gained headlines for the wrong reasons.
Here are a few of the things the prince said which caused controversy.
“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
To a driving instructor in Oban in 1995.
“I declare this thing open, whatever it is.”
On a visit to Canada in 1969.
“You’re too fat to be an astronaut!”
To a 13-year-old who told the prince he wanted to go into space, in 2001.
“We didn’t have counsellors rushing about every time somebody let off a gun, asking ‘Are you all right?’. You just got on with it.”
Commenting on modern stress counselling for service personnel in 1996.
“British women can’t cook.”
To members of the Scottish Women’s Institute in 1961.
“Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now, they are complaining they are unemployed.”
During the 1981 recession.
“What do you gargle with, pebbles?”
To the singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance.
“The Philippines must be half empty, because you’re all here running the NHS.”
To a Filipino nurse in Luton in 2013.
“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”
“Gentlemen, I think it’s time we pulled our fingers out.”
To the Industrial Co-partnership Association about British industry in 1961.
“If the man had succeeded in kidnapping Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity.”
On a gunman who attempted to kidnap the Princess Royal in
1974.
Right, Prince Philip meets members of a Tiller Girl dance troupe at the Royal Albert Hall during a celebration to mark the 45th anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and his own 80th birthday.
“Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”
In Australia in 1992, when asked to stroke a koala.
At a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme in 2006.
“You have mosquitos. I have the press.”
To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean in 2003.
“You look like a suicide bomber.”
To an officer wearing a bullet-proof vest in Stornoway in 2002.
“I wish he’d turn the microphone off!”
“Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
At the Royal Variety Performance in 2001, watching Elton John.
“Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve been doing for years.”
To the British General Dental Council in 1960.