PHILIP TOLD CHARLES: LOOK AFTER QUEEN AND FAMILY

IT WAS one of the most emotional public statements made by a Royal.

Prince Charles last night paid a touching tribute to his ‘very special’ father and his ‘remarkable, devoted service to the Queen’.

Speaking in public for the first time since Prince Philip’s death on Friday, the Prince of Wales praised the national and international work of ‘my dear Papa’.

Charles visited the Queen at Windsor Castle hours after his father died, later returning to Highgrove, his home in Gloucestershire, from where he delivered his poignant 161-word statement on behalf of the family.

Wearing a blue suit with a black tie, he said: ‘I particularly wanted to say that my father, for I suppose the last 70 years, has given the most remarkable, devoted service to the Queen, to my family and to the country, but also to the whole of the Commonwealth.’

Left hand plunged inside the pocket of his suit jacket, he added: ‘As you can imagine, my family and I miss my father enormously.

‘He was a much loved and appreciated figure and apart from anything else, I can imagine, he would be so deeply touched by the number of other people here and elsewhere around the world and the Commonwealth, who also I think, share our loss and our sorrow.’ Charles is believed to be the only member of the Royal Family who was allowed, due to coronavirus rules, to visit the Duke during his month-long stay in hospital earlier this year.

He spent around 30 minutes by his f ather’s bedside at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London on February 20 and appeared teary- eyed when he left. In a deeply personal note, he said yesterday: ‘My dear Papa was a very special person who I think above all else would have been amazed by the reaction and the touching things that have been said about him and from that point of view we are, my family, deeply grateful for all that.

‘It will sustain us in this particular loss and at this particularly sad time. Thank you.’

The warmth of Charles’s tribute echoed an emotional, and often witty, speech that he made in 2012 at a concert to mark the close of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. To the clear delight of the Queen, he addressed her as ‘Mummy’, before thanking her and Prince Philip ‘for inspiring us with your selfless duty and service and for making us proud to be British’.

Sadly, the Duke of Edinburgh missed the concert outside Buckingham Palace because he had been taken to hospital earlier that day with a bladder infection.

But to tumultuous applause, Charles told the crowd: ‘ If we shout loud enough he might just be able to hear us in hospital.’

His father’s death, at the age of 99, came on the 16th wedding anniversary of Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.

The Queen and Philip had been living at Windsor Castle during much of the pandemic rather than Buckingham Palace.

Last June, Charles expressed the pain faced by millions across Britain who were prevented from seeing their loved ones because of strict Covid restrictions.

‘Well I haven’t seen my father for a long time,’ he told Sky News in a video call.

‘He’s going to be 99 next week, so yes, or my grandchildren or anything. I’ve been doing the Facetime, it’s all very well but…’

‘He would have been amazed by the reaction’