Keep it real for Philip’s sake

English royalty is quaint. They live a charmed life of isolation in castles other people clean and cook in, and with far too much brocade upholstery. Every now and then, they go out among the common people and try to look pleasant.

Enough of the old duke. The man lived a life of privilege and died, not unexpectedly, in his 100th year. It’s not as if he was someone of consequence. He was just a royal.

English royalty is quaint. They live a charmed life of isolation in castles other people clean and cook in, and with far too much brocade upholstery.

Every now and then, they go out among the common people and try to look pleasant.

It’s all they have to do, and they do it only by accident of birth.

If Prince Philip hadn’t been a prince he might have been a property developer or a tailor.

Royals cut ribbons and give brief talks in the icy English only the privileged speak.

A house is a ‘‘hice’’ in that lingo, as in a living space of less than an acre indoors, and with no footmen.

Imagine a lifetime of never having to clean your own shoes, let alone say, ‘‘I’m sorry’’.

I hope to see no mourning T-shirts in honour of Prince Philip, with images of him grinning in naval uniform.

It would be unpleasant if they were images of him in the past year when, as you might expect, he was not at his best.

He was once handsome. As much can be said of your father and mine, and they’re unlikely to live to be 99, enjoying the best medical attention money can buy.

I would not thank you for a souvenir ballpoint pen in memory of him, or a china figure of him in highland costume – no kilts please – or tea towels of him captioned with his famous gaffes, such as asking a group of East End women who they ‘‘sponge off’’. Hilarious, the poor. And they talk so funny.

There is the distinct possibility of his and hers condiments of Prince Philip and the Queen appearing, him pepper and her salt. I don’t want them.

Nor do I want them as tea towels, in life or otherwise. Their images are etched in my brain already. Like Bambi and Mickey Mouse.

Prince Philip and the Queen lasted a very long time together because they always had caterers.

No chance of getting laid off, and less chance for that matter of developing Covid-19, which has killed so many thousands of old British people, few of whom will be honoured in their passing by so much as a souvenir teaspoon.

If anyone’s truly bereft by the prince’s passing it’s the people of Vanuatu’s Tanna Island, the Yaohnanen tribe, who revered him as a god who was once one of them, went overseas to make an advantageous marriage, and would return one day. That would now be in spirit form.

On Tanna, numerous pigs will be slaughtered and eaten, we’re told, in honour of his passing.

He could not return and be among them, their story goes, because of white people’s stupidity, jealousy, greed and perpetual fighting.

That’s a sharp anthropological observation about our not exactly flash way of life.

It’s not often that a ‘‘primitive’’ people, usually studied keenly by white academics, get to reciprocate, and who could say they’re wrong?

Now, after a year of relentless footage of Covid, and people getting their jabs, we’ll have the prince’s funeral.

The BBC has already had a record number of complaints from viewers about its coverage of his death in place of their favourite programmes.

I’m not alone in finding it a predictable event that should be acknowledged in low-key fashion, as he would have wished.

He was a mere aristocrat, but I suspect he was also a realist.