Memories of triumph and humour with Duke
Former WMN journalist Colin Gregory recounts highlights of various encounters with the Duke of Edinburgh, including a rugby cup final and lunch in Paris
THE Duke of Edinburgh visited Cornwall many times, but it is two occasions outside the beloved borders which remain uppermost in my memory.
The first was almost 250 miles away, but more Cornish people were there than at any Royal visit on this side of the Tamar.
Thirty years ago, on April 20, 1991, Prince Philip presented the trophy at Cornwall’s biggest sporting victory in almost 100 years.
The Duke was patron of the Cornwall RFU, in fact he was still patron at the time of his death, and he came to Twickenham to support his team. Sitting alongside the chairman of Cornwall RFU Bill Bishop, he was among 40,000 Cornish supporters who had made the trip to Twickenham in the hope that the boys in gold and black would win the trophy for the first time since 1908.
It was a match never to be forgotten as Cornwall hit back after going 16-3 down to Yorkshire to turn the course of the match and win 29-20 in extra time.
The beaming Duke presented the then county championship trophy to captain Chris Alcock, who had missed most of the match after being taken off through injury.
He had also attended a number of county matches at Redruth over the years and was also at Twickenham when Cornwall won the championship again in 1999.
As a journalist for the Western Morning News I covered the Twickenham finals, but it was in May 2000 that I had one of the most pleasant surprises of my life when I received a phone call at my home in Truro from the British Embassy in Paris asking: “Would you like to have lunch with the Duke of Edinburgh?”
I had been making arrangements necessary to be among the Press corps covering the 60th anniversary of the evacuation of the French port of Dunkirk. Prince Charles was going to be there as well as the French vice-president so I had to go through strict vetting before getting the passes for what was going to be a huge event.
Over 1,000 veterans, including a coach load of over 30 from Devon and Cornwall, were going to be parading alongside 10 military bands through the streets of the city they had been lucky to escape from in the famous Little Ships evacuation of 1940, and I was being sent by the Western Morning News, for whom I was then Cornwall chief reporter.
The lunch was two days after the Dunkirk commemoration, which memorably saw me phoning over an eight-page supplement from a Dunkirk phone kiosk, and was in a village hall at Ouistrehan, the port a few miles up the canal from the heavily bombarded city of Caen.
Prince Philip was there to unveil a memorial to the crews of the Allied Landing Craft who had brought troops ashore on D-Day and afterwards in June, 1944. After the unveiling I followed the Prince and local dignitaries to the small village hall where we sat at wooden tables and were served some absolutely delicious local food and fine wines.
Although it was an honour to be sitting with the Duke and many army and navy chiefs, the real plus for me on the day was that we were joined by Winston Churchill’s daughter, Lady Mary Soames. She had accompanied her father on his dangerous visits to France in the war years, and we all listened in awe at her stories of those perilous days.
The Duke spoke of the debt Britain owed to the crews of the landing craft. “They were getting men ashore in incredibly dangerous conditions. The Germans were firing at them, they had to keep their heads and we owe them a lot for their bravery as they transported troops to the beaches,” he said. “They were vital to the success of one of the most important actions of the war.”
An amusing memory from that day is when the Duke and I headed to the toilet at the same time after lunch. The way things were then in French villages the ladies’ and gents’ toilets were in the same room, separated by a low wooden panel and swinging door, so as we stood there a woman came in, sat down and proceeded to relieve herself.
The Duke raised his eyebrows, gave me a quizzical look, and we both laughed quietly.
A few years before that I had been among the press corps when the Duke visited St Austell with the Queen. He went to the leisure centre at Poltair where schoolchildren from the area were showing off their sporting prowess in the gym.
One young girl, aged about 12, attempted to vault over the horse but didn’t complete it and made a heavy landing on her bottom.
She was most annoyed and stamped her foot in anger, to which the Duke said to her: “Don’t get your knickers in a twist!”
We all laughed, the girl turned red, and the quote was the lead item in my report of the Royal visit.