Prince Philip

by Nigel Cawthorne

At a meeting of the International Equestrian Federation in Geneva, a Chinese delegate asked Prince Philip about protocol. He was not fussy: ‘As far as we are concerned, you can play Colonel Bogey and fly a pair of knickers from the flagpole as your team enters the arena,’ he said.

  The prince has won two team gold medals at World Championships (in 1974 and 1980). He admits his proudest moment was winning the four-in-hand individual title at Windsor, with a team of bays, in 1982, although he said: ‘It was very satisfying, but the only reason I won was because George Bowman Senior [multiple world champion, team and individual] came a cropper somewhere.’

  These were the days when the Prince competed with horses, but there came a time when he felt he should reduce the horsepower a little. ‘In 1986, I came to the conclusion I was the oldest person on the horse teams circuit, having done five World Championships and God knows how many Europeans,’ he said. ‘I’d already been driving ponies at Balmoral, so I decided to go on with them.’

  Horses sometimes get the rough side of the Duke’s tongue. At the carriage-driving competition in the Lowther Horse Driving Trials, Prince Philip grew red-faced as he struggled to keep control of his horses. ‘Come on, you bloody idiots,’ he exclaimed within earshot of shocked spectators. ‘It was marvellous,’ said one. ‘He was just like his Spitting Image character.’

  Walking across a muddy field at the Lowther trials in 2008, he said: ‘It was like walking on a fat lady’s tummy.’ The event had to be cancelled that year, due to heavy rain.

  Philip’s enthusiasm for carriage driving sometimes wanes: ‘You’ve got to be a nutcase to do this. The best bit is when it’s all over,’ he complains. After a particularly frustrating day at the reins in 2006, he said: ‘I want to shoot the lot of them. Then myself.’

  When asked how he liked to relax, sport was not the first thing to come to mind: ‘Relax? Have dinner and go to bed,’ he said. At eighty-five, it’s no surprise he considered retiring from carriage driving: ‘You’d be surprised how much work it is. You’ve got to practise like mad and it’s absolutely bloody exhausting.’

  Asked if his driving got in the way of his duties, he said: ‘It’s the other way round. The duties get in the way of the driving.’

  Elf and Safety

  One interviewer pointed out that Philip’s favourite sport was not the gentle kind that most elderly people took up, like crown green bowls or pub darts. ‘It is a bit risky, isn’t it, for the consort of the Queen in his mid-eighties?’ she asked. Spluttered the prince, impatiently: ‘Saying, “Oh it’s a very dangerous sport.” You haven’t got a bloody clue, have you?’ She admitted she had not. ‘You’ve never seen anybody come to any harm, so why do you say it’s dangerous? It’s like climbing. People say, ‘Oh, you can fall off.’ Well, they don’t fall off. Not if they learn properly and if they’re properly organised. It’s not dangerous. It’s dangerous for people who don’t know the first thing about it. If I were to put you on the carriage, of course you would get into trouble. And if you were to climb Everest, again you’d get into trouble. So you’ve got to see risk in relation to ability. When did anybody take their eye out playing conkers?’

  Prince Philip is a vocal opponent to health and safety harridans and has suffered remarkably few mishaps in a carriage career that has spanned three decades. Of his rare accidents, he plainly says: ‘I turned over years ago when I hit a stump,’ he said. ‘And once, in practice, a pole on the carriage broke, so you’re pretty helpless then. I was thrown and kicked on the way out.’

  When it came to fitness, the prince bluntly acknowledges: ‘I’ve been lucky. I’ve had very few things go wrong. It’s terrible for people who break things. Take [Wayne] Rooney’ (who had just fractured a metatarsal) – ‘that must be really hideous for him at the high point of his career.’ What did he think of Theo Walcott as Wayne Rooney’s replacement in the England squad? ‘No idea. I don’t have opinions about things I know nothing about.’

  Football

  Generally, Philip has little respect for football. During an interview for the Daily Telegraph, he asked journalist Sue Mott what she did for fun. When she replied with ‘watching football,’ he inquired: ‘Don’t you actually do anything? Shove-ha’penny or something?’

  During a visit to Uruguay in 1962, the Prince declared: ‘I am convinced that the greatest contribution Britain has made to the national life of Uruguay was teaching the people football.’

  Although watching football is not something he finds entertaining, it sometimes inspires his own recreations. Once when eyeing Nottingham Forest Football Club’s trophies, he

  pondered: ‘I suppose I’d get in trouble if I were to melt them down.’

  It seems he was out of his depth when it came to the beautiful game. In 1964, when Chelsea captain Terry Venables introduced him to a new player who would be ‘playing his first game,’ Philip

  replied: ‘You mean he has never played football before?’

  At Arsenal’s Highbury stadium, Prince Philip was introduced to Leeroy Thornhill, a musician from the group The Prodigy, who was part of the club’s celebrity team. He was wearing a replica shirt with the name of the sponsor Sega Dreamcast on it. Philip asked: ‘Is Dreamcast the name of the team?’

  Visiting the Krishna-Avanti Primary School, Mo Kassamali, the coach of a local football team, asked the ninety-year-old prince if he wanted to come for a quick training session. The prince declined with the excuse: ‘The old heart’s not working.’

  No go areas

  Before the Olympic Games in 1948, he told an audience: ‘I wish to contradict a rumour. You will not see a familiar figure bearing the Olympic torch on the opening day.’

  Asked whether he fancied bungee jumping, the Prince sassed: ‘No, I don’t think I’d like my eyeballs to go out and then in again, somehow.’

  At a golfing society dinner in 1949, he prefaced his address with the statement: ‘Prepare for a shock – I do not play golf.’

  The Spur of the Moment

  Prince Philip reserves much of his wit to leaven what would otherwise be the dreary round of official openings, garden parties, awards ceremonies and receptions. Needless to say, even when performing his official duties there is never a dull moment. Royal rota Cameraman Peter Wilkinson has a tried-and-true game plan: ‘Whenever I lose him in a crowd, I just listen out for the laughter and then I find him. He loves making people laugh.’

  Robes

  On the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Silver Jubilee celebrations, a sudden gust of wind caught the ermine-trimmed robes of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robin Gillett, blowing them up like a balloon. ‘Look, I think the Lord Mayor is taking off,’ Prince Philip said to the Queen.

  In 1965, Prince Philip caused a minor controversy when he described the ceremonial robes of the councillors in Ryde as ‘dressing gowns.’ Not to be confused with his

  own dressing gowns, with his royal crest embroidered on the chest.

  Eating

  When the newly appointed Mayor of Slough David Macisaac first met Prince Philip at a Duke of Edinburgh Awards ceremony, the prince asked him if he was going to put on weight ‘with all the meals you attend as mayor.’ Macisaac said he hoped not. Prince Philip patted him on his stomach simply saying, ‘We will see.’ At the opening of East Berkshire College in Maidenhead a few months later, the prince patted him on the stomach again, which was now much larger: ‘I told you you would get fat!’

  Beards

  In his younger days, Prince Philip sported a remarkably bushy beard – an achievement it seems no one can match. At a garden party at Buckingham Palace in 2009, the prince spotted Stephen Judge, who was sporting a small sculpted beard. ‘What do you do?’ asked Philip. ‘I’m a designer, sir,’ Judge replied. ‘Well, you’re obviously not a hirsute designer,’ the prince added. Seeing that the man was crushed, Philip tried to revive the conversation by saying: ‘Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you? If you are going to grow a beard, grown a beard. You really
must try harder.’

  The beard of composer Simon Bainbridge was another to come under criticism by the prince. At a reception at the Royal Academy, the prince remarked on the sparseness of Bainbridge’s beard compared to the luxuriant growth of his hair: ‘Why don’t you go the whole hog?’ he asked.

  Abilities

  On a visit to Bromley in 2012, the Duke spotted eighty-nine-year-old wheelchair-bound Barbara Dubery who was wrapped in a foil blanket to keep warm. ‘Are they going to put you in the oven next?’ he asked.

  Not one to worry about offending, his potential for wheelchair jokes seems endless. The prince once asked wheelchair-bound Jackie Henderson: ‘Do people trip over you?’ And of her electric wheelchair he said: ‘Do you need a licence for that?’ At a Buckingham Palace garden party, he asked a paraplegic: ‘Why do you have a stick if you’re in a wheelchair?’ At another garden party, wheelchair-bound James Banfield was told: ‘That’s the best way to get around this place.’ Twenty-nine-year-old Sandie Hollands, who suffers from a muscle-wasting disease, was told: ‘You are a bit of a menace in that thing.’ She was shocked and replied: ‘I can assure you I am a good driver and not a menace.’ He pointed to the metal footrests and said: ‘They catch people’s ankles.’ When she told him that she did not hit people’s ankles, he smiled.

  Visiting Redbridge House in London on the Diamond Jubilee tour, Prince Philip was introduced to sixty-year-old David Miller who had a spinal problem that made walking difficult. Pointing to his four-wheeled mobility scooter, the Prince said: ‘How many people have you knocked over this morning on that thing?’ – prompting laughter from both Mr. Miller and the crowd. Philip cracked the same gag later when he met the mayor of Waltham Forest, Geoff Walker, who has cerebral palsy and also uses a mobility scooter. But the councillor saw the funny side. ‘I told him ‘no, I had not knocked anyone down,’’ he said.

  Always one to offer advice, in 2013 Prince Philip jokingly told a double amputee that he should put wheels on his prosthetic limbs to move around quicker. On another occasion, Prince Philip inquired of a soldier who had been wounded by a ball-bearing bomb: ‘When you shake your head, it doesn’t rattle?’

  Prince Philip is just as keen to exchange a quip with the blind. During the Golden Jubilee tour in 2002, he spotted fifty-five-year-old Susan Edwards waiting outside Exeter Cathedral with her guide dog Natalie, and said: ‘I understand they now have eating dogs for the anorexic.’ Ms Edwards had been virtually blind for seventeen years and did not take offence.

  In 2002, Stephen Menary, a teenage army cadet nearly blinded in a Real IRA bomb, was introduced to the Queen and Prince Philip at a tree-planting event in Hyde Park as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations. When the Queen asked the fifteen-year-old how much sight he had, the prince promptly responded: ‘Not a lot, judging by the tie he’s wearing.’ A year after the incident, Stephen was on parade at the Jubilee celebrations going past Buckingham Palace and flashed a giant Union Jack tie as if to say: ‘This one is even worse!’

  In March 2003, fourteen-year-old George Barlow wrote to the Queen inviting her to Romford, Essex. Prince Philip accompanied the Queen on her visit. When introduced to the teenager, he said: ‘Ah, you’re the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then? Ha, ha. Well done.’ Afterwards, George said that meeting the Queen was a great honour, while Buckingham Palace said the duke ‘would never have inferred in any way the boy was stupid’.

  At a Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust in County Down in 2009, Prince Philip was introduced to a shirtless seventy-nine-year-old former RUC man who was receiving physiotherapy treatment for injuries he had sustained in the Troubles. ‘All that pushing and pulling, bloody agony,’ said the prince, waving his arms. ‘It is hard to say whether physios actually do anything.’ He added: ‘I hope you don’t get pneumonia in the process.’ And as for acupuncture: ‘If someone tried that with me, they’d have no luck.’

  The Public

  Visiting a comprehensive in Sheffield that used to have one of the worst academic records, the duke said to two of the mums: ‘Were you here in the bad old days? That’s why you can’t read and write then!’

  An honorary Air Commodore, Prince Philip was in full RAF uniform when he visited RAF Kinloss where three squadrons were being disbanded due to defence cuts in 2011. When one of the air staff who was leaving the service told him that she was going to be a dental nurse, he shot back: ‘It’ll be like pulling teeth.’ The other told him that she was going to work on the future development of the base. ‘You’re going to have to have a very good imagination then,’ he quipped.

  In 1975, the traditional Maundy Money (special silver coins given to selected pensioners on the Thursday before Easter) was distributed at Peterborough Cathedral. Until 1965, when the city of Peterborough was merged with the county of Huntingdon, the Soke of Peterborough was a county in its own right – soke being the Old English word for a jurisdiction. In the subsequent walkabout, Prince Philip endeavoured to demonstrate his knowledge of local history and quipped to an onlooker: ‘I suppose you’re an old soke.’ The bystander took offence. No so well informed as the prince, he assumed that Philip was calling him a drunk.

  At a garden party for eight thousand guests on the grounds of Buckingham Palace, Prince Philip was told by a guest that she was expecting her second child. ‘I hope you can afford your hat,’ he replied. A farmer then told him about the continental breeds of cattle he was rearing. Ever distrustful of anything foreign, the prince said: ‘Oh, that awful tasting thing.’

  At a show at Waltham Forest College in 2002 illustrating the changing fashions in the fifty years since the Queen had come to the throne, Prince Philip told model Somanah Achadoo: ‘Your hair’s too long, you should have had it cut for the Fifties.’ Plainly he mistook the twenty-eight-year-old college lecture for a Royal Navy recruit.

  On a visit to caves in Australia, he was told beware of the drips, to which he said: ‘Oh I’ve run into plenty in my life.’

  At a garden party in July 2003, Prince Philip was introduced to a perfectly respectable building boss who told him that he was retiring after years in a business renowned for cowboy operators. The prince only asked him whether or not he had any friends left.

  At the ceremony in Normandy to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, veteran Tom Gilhooley found himself standing on parade for over an hour. Prince Philip said to him: ‘You’re going to pay for it standing out in the sun for such a long time.’ Later, the prince passed by again. By this time Tom’s face was bright red and burning. ‘I told you you’d pay for it standing out in the sun!’ said Philip. ‘We all had a good laugh,’ said Gilhooley, happy that the prince had taken notice and remembered them.

  On a trip to Malta in 2007, the prince asked a soon-to-be-wed couple in their thirties: ‘How long have you been at it?’ Just what he meant by this could not be ascertained.

  At the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall in 2007, the prince was reminded that, at the previous year’s event, he had described the members of the association who had attended as mainly ‘taxi drivers and clothing manufacturers.’ The prince corrected him, saying: ‘No, I said they were mainly taxi drivers and tailors.’

  Water was a problem around Hull in 2008, when many people were forced from their homes by tidal flooding. Bidding farewell to the local council leader Carl Minns, the prince cleverly advised him to ‘keep your head above water.’

  Visiting the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth in 2009, the Duke of Edinburgh asked a woman what she did in the war. She replied that she was born in 1954, a full nine years after the war was over. (The confusion arose because fifty-five-year-old Linda Rivers was accompanying her eight-three-year-old mother Ena Davies, who was a veteran of the Land Army).

  Visiting the town of Crawley, West Sussex, to mark its sixtieth anniversary, Prince Philip asked Claire Burns, the manager of Druckers Vienna Patisserie if she was responsible for making the people of Crawley over
weight.

  Moving on to the Thomas Bennett Community College, the prince popped his head around the door of the library and asked the teacher invigilating: ‘Can they all read?’

  Meeting a volunteer working for the Samaritans, the prince asked: ‘You didn’t try to commit suicide, did you?’

  Stupidity

  The prince is always ready for a stiff put-down to any question he considers stupid. In 2000, an official greeting him at a Canadian airport asked innocently: ‘What was your flight like, Your Royal Highness?’ Philip: ‘Have you ever flown in a plane?’ The official said: ‘Oh yes, sir, many times.’ ‘Well,’ said Philip, ‘it was just like that.’

  In 1997, the prince arrived at Cambridge University’s Homerton College to open a new teaching block when he was approached by sixty-five-year-old car-park attendant Bob Proudfoot, who asked for his ticket. ‘You bloody silly fool, I’m expected,’ replied the prince before driving off, leaving Mr Proudfoot bemused. ‘This chap flew into the car park driving a Land-Rover,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect it to be the Duke of Edinburgh, who was guest of honour of the college. I thought he would turn up in a big chauffeur-driven car… There was no reason to talk like that.’

  The prince once berated a junior officer for being improperly dressed for dinner, but received some of his own sass back. ‘What’s that ordinary white shirt in aid of?’ he asked. ‘You’re supposed to be wearing a dress shirt, aren’t you?’ To which the officer replied: ‘I only wear that on special occasions.’

  Visiting Bolton, Prince Philip was greeted by a city dignitary. ‘Are you the town clerk?’ asked the prince. Sean Harriss replied that he was the chief executive. ‘Ridiculous title,’ said the prince, who then wanted to know where Mr Harriss’ ceremonial wig was. The harassed chief executive explained that he had left it in his office. ‘It is something I will remember for the rest of my life,’ said Harriss. ‘He is famous for his sense of humour, so it is great to have shared a joke with him.’