THE UNSUNG HEROES OF THE FIRM
It was lovely to hear the ‘new’ Duke of Edinburgh speak so movingly of his father, Prince Philip, in interviews to mark his 60th birthday.
I can’t quite believe that Prince Edward is 60 – to me, it always seems that he and wife Sophie are still the ‘youngsters’ in the Royal Family.
They are very much the unsung heroes of The Firm, and Edward has taken over from his father as head of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, which helps and empowers young people.
My first encounter with royalty was meeting Prince Philip after I’d finished one of these awards, aged 19.
It was at St James’s Palace and as he strode towards a group of us, everyone suddenly became very nervous.
I broke the ice with a tale about how we’d been chased by a herd of cows on one of our expeditions (we found a fence to jump over just in time), and the duke roared with laughter and made us all feel 10 feet tall.
As Prince Edward told Alan Titchmarsh on his programme Love Your Weekend:
‘He was brilliant with all sorts of people. Sometimes it didn’t necessarily come across that way, but he was. He was always, always encouraging everybody. You needed to get to know him. He was an extraordinary man.’
Besides his father’s achievements, such as founding the award scheme, modernising the palace system, environmental advocacy and engineering prowess, Edward also paid tribute to the crucial role his father played in supporting and partnering Queen Elizabeth and being a devoted grandfather, too.
The Duke of Edinburgh title was not a hereditary one and so it was up to King Charles to bestow the title on Edward a year ago.
‘It was a huge privilege but also quite a lot of weight of expectation. I mean, there’s an awful lot of legacy that came with that title and everything that my father had done. Especially when you’re not inheriting it, this is a choice… that comes with all the expectations that people have,’ he said.
So closely associated is it with Philip, that even his son struggles to remember that people are referring to him, and not his father!
The duke has even walked past chairs with his title on them to find what he assumes will be his place.
‘It’s just the strangest feeling. You walk into a room and, particularly still today, there are name places on a card and I look around going , ‘Yes, but where am I sitting?’’
Edward comes across really well and the full interview is worth a watch on ITVX.