You could almost feel him rolling his eyes, muttering ‘for pity’s sake!’

Addressing the Commons – or, as the Duke of Edinburgh used to call it, “the monkey house” – Boris Johnson said he suspected the Duke “might be embarrassed or even exasperated” by MPS’ tributes to him. This must have been a daunting thought for the 135 MPS who were still to speak.

And indeed, during the hours that followed, it was easy to imagine the Duke watching, in spirit form, from the gallery – while, every now and again, rolling his eyes and muttering, “Get on with it!”, or “For pity’s sake, about a dozen of you have already SAID that!”, or “Haven’t any of this shower got any funny stories? There are HEAPS of good stories about me, and hardly any of these poor saps seem to know them!”

Still, there could be no doubting the sincerity of the tributes, or the strength of feeling expressed. Because of Covid restrictions, only a few dozen MPS were permitted to attend, with the rest joining in from home. It must have felt frustrating and inadequate, having to deliver one’s eulogy for a prince into the camera of a laptop in a suburban spare bedroom. How these MPS must have wished they could have participated in this solemn occasion in person.

Parliamentary tributes sometimes say as much about the person paying them as they do about the person to whom they’re being paid, and this was often the case here.

For example, Mr Johnson’s tribute was characteristically colourful, he praised the Duke’s sense of humour, and defended his habit of making controversial remarks. Sir Keir Starmer’s tribute, meanwhile, was characteristically earnest, and focused on the Duke’s sense of duty and support for good causes.

Speaking for the SNP, Ian Blackford concentrated on the Duke’s love of Scotland (“Once again, the Scottish connection couldn’t be clearer…”)

Harriet Harman, for her part, offered a feminist angle (“He chose to make his central role in life to support his wife. Half way through the last century, that was profoundly countercultural. The expectation was that to be a man was to be the head of the family …”)

One remark, however, was somewhat puzzling. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, claimed that the Duke lived by “the old rule” that “if you have nothing good to say about someone, don’t say anything.”

The transcribers from Hansard must have wondered whether they’d heard Sir Iain correctly.

The Duke was celebrated for many things, but rarely for his delicacy and tact. Indeed, his blistering candour was one of the things people loved about him most. To give just one example, cited by Mr Johnson less than an hour earlier: “It is true that he told a British student in Papua New Guinea that he was lucky not to be eaten…”

Had the Duke really lived by the old rule in question, these Commons tributes would have been an awful lot shorter – and an awful lot duller.

‘It is true that he told a British student in Papua New Guinea that he was lucky not to be eaten’