‘THE ULTIMATE ICE-BREAKER’
ROYAL JOURNALIST CHARLES RAE SPENT 20 YEARS FOLLOWING PHILIP AROUND THE WORLD. HE PAYS TRIBUTE TO A ‘FORTHRIGHT MAN WHO DID IT HIS WAY’
ON TOUR with the royals, we always had to have one person following Prince Philip because you’d never know what he’d be saying next.
On one such tour in Australia, the Duke of Edinburgh went on his own to meet Aborigines. He looked at them decked in loin cloths, daubed in paint, holding their traditional weapons, and asked bluntly: ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’ The Aborigines all fell about laughing. Nobody took offence and everyone accepted that this was typical Prince Philip – breaking the ice as he always did best.
In a world where the royal family were restricted to several phrases whenever they met anyone – the usual ones being ‘did you have to travel far?’, ‘aren’t the flowers lovely?’ and ‘what do you do?’ – Philip was the ultimate ice-breaker.
In doing so, he shot from the lip. He was brusque and to the point, and he didn’t care about offending people or being labelled racist. He was just honest and forthright, and did it his way. As a royal reporter who followed him around the world and saw him in action over two decades, I admired him for that.
It sounds like a cliché but Philip really had been the Queen’s rock over the years, and when times got rough she turned to him constantly for advice. In public, he walked three paces behind his wife. But at home he was the boss.
My own favourite memory of Philip came from a press reception in South Africa. A group of reporters were chatting to the Queen’s lady-in-waiting and she roared with laughter over something we said. Philip, on the other side of the loud room, heard her and came straight over to ask: ‘What are you laughing at?’ She replied, ‘These gentlemen are very funny,’ and Philip replied, ‘They’re not funny – they’re members of the press!’ With that, he turned on his heels and left.
At another ceremony, as he was about to unveil a plaque, he introduced himself to the watching crowd as ‘the world’s best curtain puller’.
But he knew, as we all did, that Philip was so much more than that. The Queen will miss her ‘rock’ indeed.
He shot from the lip and didn’t care about offending people or being labelled racist