Prince Philip

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Lady Folk

  Prince Philip has always had a keen eye for the ladies and the Queen often smiles when he makes straight for the prettiest young woman in the audience. ‘He’s a sailor at heart and a red-blooded male. I think she’s still rather proud she snared him,’ said a royal correspondent.

  Prince Philip’s cousin Alexandra, Queen of Yugoslavia, said: ‘Blondes, brunettes and redhead charmers, Philip gallantly and, I think impartially, squired them all.’ Indeed, assessing the courtiers’ initial estimation of Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten as a potential spouse of the heir to the throne, the King’s private secretary Sir Alan Lascelles wrote: ‘They felt he was rough, uneducated and would probably not be faithful.’

  After the 2003 Royal Variety Show he told thirty-year-old musician and TV presenter Myleene Klass in the line-up: ‘You’re fit aren’t you.’ ‘I fell about laughing,’ she said.

  Four years later, he was introduced to Russell Brand and said about the young woman standing next to him: ‘She’s got all the right stuff in all the right places.’ Apparently, Brand had not noticed.

  Philip got lucky with Alesha Dixon, then with Mis-Teeq, in 2002. The R&B singer had been invited to sing at Buckingham Palace for the Jubilee concert where the Prince’s attention was caught by her skimpy outfit. ‘Aren’t you cold, my dear?’ he asked. She could not resist flirting. ‘What are you going to do?’ she replied. ‘Lend me your jacket?’

  Then in his sixties, Prince Philip was bowled over by the wife of the general manager to Compaq Computers. He had been invited to lunch by the chairman of Compaq, Ben Rosen. He asked an equerry for some tips on suitable topics of the conversation and was told of the prince’s interest in aircraft, so Rosen took time out to mug up the BAe 146, a British-made four-engine jet. ‘The prince and I were seated at the same table, separated by the wife of our UK general manager,’ said Rosen. ‘But from the moment we were seated, the prince spoke exclusively with the general manager’s wife; neither I nor anyone else at the table could get a word in edgewise.

  And I was the host! So it went during the appetiser dish and through the main course. Then, just as the waiters were clearing the entrée dishes, an opportunity presented itself. There was a momentary break in the conversation, and I seized the moment. My opening line: “Your Royal Highness, I understand that you still fly airplanes.”’

  Prince Philip broke off his conversation with the general manager’s wife and fell momentarily silent. Then, with a withering look directed at Rosen, he said: ‘Yes, you know, I am in that still period of life. That period when I can still lift a fork.’

  He demonstrated lifting a fork.

  ‘That period when I can still lift a glass.’

  He lifted a glass.

  ‘That period when I can still breathe.

  He demonstrated breathing. Then there was a pause.

  ‘Yes, I still fly.’

  With that, he turned away from Rosen and returned to his conversation with the general manager’s wife.

  In 2010, pointing to a tartan tie being worn by Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray, the prince said to Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie: ‘That’s a nice tie. Are you wearing knickers made out of that material?’ The doughty MSP quipped back: ‘I couldn’t possibly comment. And even if I had, I couldn’t possibly exhibit them.’ Overhearing the exchange were both the Queen and Pope Benedict XVI who was visiting Britain at the time.

  Even at the age of ninety-one, the Prince had not lost his eye for a pretty woman. During the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee tour in 2012, he spotted a twenty-five-year-old blonde council worker who was wearing an eye-catching red dress with a zip running down the front, and whispered to a nearby police: ‘I would get arrested if I unzipped that dress.’ The policeman struggled to stifle his laughter.

  Prince Philip seems to have a preoccupation with the ladies’ fasteners. During a private view of jewellery designed by award-winning silversmith Jocelyn Burton at Bentley & Skinner in Piccadilly later that year, he spoke up for all spouses when he complained of the problem of undoing jewellery fastenings. ‘Those infernal clasps are absolutely impossible. You fiddle with them for hours, then they suddenly come undone and they fall on the floor but you have no idea why. When you try to close them again you find you just can’t do it.’

  At a cocktail party to support the World Wide Fund for Nature, Prince Philip pounced on fashion writer Serena French. ‘I suppose you’ll be looking out for people wearing mink coats then,’ he said. ‘Surely nobody would wear fur to a wildlife fund event,’ said another guest. ‘Well, you never know what they’re wearing underneath,’ said the prince. Turning back to Ms French, he added: ‘You’re not wearing mink knickers are you?’ Then he roared with laughter.

  Spotting a twelve-year-old girl in Aberdeen in 2012 who was wearing a ‘Kickers’ jumper, he said: ‘I thought that said Knickers.’

  Prince Philip is certainly old-school when it comes to women’s liberation. At a drinks party at Buckingham Palace in 2000, he spotted a group of female Labour MPs who name badges were clear prefixed ‘Ms’. ‘Ah, so this is feminist corner then,’ he said. The MPs merely burst out laughing. One said: ‘I was not offended. It was clearly meant as a joke.’ Another said: ‘We thought it was hilariously funny that he assumed a group of Labour women must be raving feminists.’ But then in 1987, he had said to a woman solicitor: ‘I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.’

  In 2009, he asked a women’s group in Hull: ‘Still downtrodden then?’

  Visiting Lambeth Palace with the Queen in 2012, he was passing an area in front of the press pit – itself predominately female – where a number of women, including a nun and the Reverend Canon Dr Frances Ward, the Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, were sitting. ‘So this is the female section,’ he said. ‘Are you all gathered here for protection?’ In Kenya in 1984, when a local lady gave him a figurine as a gift, he said: ‘You are a woman aren’t you?’

  In San Francisco in 1983, he met mayor Dianne Feinstein and several female members of the city council and remarked: ‘Aren’t there any male officials? This is a nanny city.’

  Meeting four belly dancers in their forties in Swansea, he said: ‘I thought Eastern women just sit around smoking pipes and eating sweets all day.’ One of them, forty-seven-year-old Beverly Richards, replied: ‘We do that as well.’ ‘I can see that,’ said the prince with a glint in his eye.’ Later Beverly said: ‘We were stunned, then burst out laughing. But it’s an honour to be insulted by royalty. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.’ She admitted they were a little overweight, but said: ‘We are certainly full of Eastern promise.’

  Afterwards, the prince watched a demonstration of surfing by Chris Griffiths. When he explained he was a professional surfer, Prince Philip said: ‘Good god! You mean somebody paid you to do that.’

  Visiting Wyven Barracks in Exeter in 2010, he asked twenty-four-year-old sea cadet Elizabeth Rendle what she did for a living. When she told him she worked in nightclub. He asked: ‘Oh, what, a strip club?’ When she said no, he thought better of it, saying it was ‘probably too cold for that anyway’.

  One can only speculate what was on Prince Philip’s mind in 2000 when he saw robots bumping into each other and said: ‘They’re not mating are they?’

  When journalist Fiammetta Rocco interviewed him for the Independent on Sunday in 1992, she noticed that had a copy of a book called Sex In Our Time among the volumes on naval history on the bookshelves in his office. She also asked him about extra-marital affairs. (His name has been linked with Daphne du Maurier, whose husband worked in his private office; the cabaret star Helene Cordet and actress Anna Massey. Over the years, his name was also linked to those of glamorous television personality Katie Boyle, film star Merle Oberon and Princess Alexandra.) Asked by Fiammetta Rocco about the rumoured affairs, he said: ‘Good God woman, I don’t know what sort of company you keep. Have you ever stopped to think that for the last forty years I have never moved anywhere witho
ut a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?’

  Despite the rumours and his womanizing tendencies, there is no question of the Prince’s loyalty to the Queen: ‘How could I be unfaithful to the Queen? There is no way that she could possibly retaliate.’On another occasion he said: ‘My job, first, second and last is never to let the Queen down.’

  In 1956 when Philip took off on world tour by himself, leaving his wife and young family behind, the headline: ‘Report – Queen, Duke in rift over party girl,’ appeared in the Baltimore Sun. ‘Not since the first rumours of a romance between the former King Edward VIII and the then-Mrs Simpson have Americans gobbled up the London dispatches so avidly,’ commented journalist Alistair Cooke.

  In 1948, just a year after he was married, Prince Philip had met showgirl Pat Kirkwood, whose legs were once described by critic Kenneth Tynan as ‘the eighth wonder of the world.’ On rumours of their presumed affair, true to royal tradition, Prince Philip remained unswervingly silent.

  In 2010, he flirted with Carla Bruni when she visited Windsor with her husband President Nicolas Sarkozy. He also made a beeline for Qatari beauty Sheikha Mozah when she visited Windsor with her husband the Emir. The prince showed her artefacts from the Queen’s first visit to the Gulf, saying: ‘That was 1979, you weren’t born then?’ ‘Yes, I wasn’t born then,’ she replied with in twinkle. Not only had seen been born, she was already twenty and married to the Emir.

  His carriage driving partner Lady Penny Romsey, an attractive aristocrat thirty years his junior, also gave rise to fevered speculation. One morning, they were out for a spin on Holkham beach when they came across nudists. The prince simply raised his hat and said: ‘Good morning.’

  At eighty-five, he told Jeremy Paxman: ‘As far as I’m concerned, every time I talk to a woman, they say I’ve been to bed with her – as if she had no say in the matter. Well, I’m bloody flattered at my age to think some pretty girl is interested in me. It’s absolutely cuckoo.’ Years before, he told Patricia Brabourne, Lord Mountbatten’s daughter: ‘The way papers write about my affairs I might as well have done it.’

  In 1988, Prince Philip famously remarked: ‘When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.’

  In Canada, Prince Philip was introduced to author Carol Shields and asked her what she wrote about. ‘I write about women and their problems,’ she replied. This was too much for the prince. ‘What about men and their problems?’ he said. Then after a stony silence, Philip back-pedalled. ‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘there isn’t much to say. They’ve only got one problem and that’s women.’

  In the early 1970s, the Queen, Prince Philip and their four children spent their holidays in Ross-shire, where they met Rob Tweddle, a naturalist at the Inverpolly Nature Reserve. Tweddle recalled: ‘One day I was driving along a little narrow road with Philip in the car and we came across a green Morris Minor that had run off of the road. The offside wheels had gone into a ditch. Two female teachers were standing at the side of the road. I stopped the car and Philip jumped out and we actually lifted the car back on to the road. Philip said to them ‘now don’t do that again’ and we got back in the car. When I looked back they were still standing with their mouths open.’ At the very least, it can be said that Philip has a knack for impressing women.

  Arts and Entertainment

  Asked at a Foreign Press Association lunch in 1964 whether he thought the royal family was interested in the arts, Prince Philip said: ‘There is no art form in this country that has not go some member of the royal family at the head of it.… We live in what virtually amounts to a museum.’

  However, Prince Philip does show some discernment when it comes to the arts. After being told that Madonna was singing the James Bond Die Another Day theme in 2002, Prince Philip said: ‘Are we going to need ear plugs?’ He was not alone in this opinion. Grammy award winning composer David Arnold, a veteran of the last three Bond movies, described her synthesised, techno dance track as ‘the worst Bond song ever’. He also expressed sympathy for the prince who attended the premier. ‘I felt sorry for the old boy having to sit through that – it was very loud,’ he said. As to the ear plugs? ‘If I’d had a pair, I would have given him them.’

  The prince also had little time for loud music. He told a group of children from the British Deaf Association standing close to a steel band at a Prince’s Trust event at Cardiff Castle in 2000: ‘Deaf? If you’re near that music, it’s no wonder you are deaf.’

  After tenor Russell Watson finished a cutlery-rattling rendition of Jerusalem at the dinner at Buckingham Palace in 2011, Prince Philip said: ‘That was magnificent, but why do you need a bloody microphone? They could have heard you in outer space.’ Then he turned to singer’s partner Louise Harris and said: ‘You must go deaf listening to him all the time.’ Indeed for his ninetieth birthday, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf gave the prince a pair of ear defenders – to use when he goes shooting. ‘Can you get Radio Three on them?’ he asked when they were presented to him.

  Other singers also came in for some flak. After the Royal Variety Show in 1969, Prince Philip asked Tom Jones: ‘What do you gargle with – pebbles?’ He added the following day: ‘It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs.’ He took another swing at the Welsh singer at a small-business lunch discussing how difficult it is to get rich in Britain, saying: ‘What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.’

  Prince Philip also described Adam Faith’s voice as sounding like bath water going down the plug hole. Then in 2006 he asked the petite Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins: ‘How are your vocal chords?’ ‘Fine thank you,’ she replied. ‘No boils or warts on them yet,’ the concerned Prince said.

  Not that Prince Philip does not rate singers above other show-business celebrities. After Piers Morgan introduced Britain’s Got Talent winner, tenor Paul Potts, to the royal couple, Prince Philip asked: ‘You’re judges, is that right?’ Morgan, who was accompanied by Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden, said they were. ‘So,’ chuckled the prince, looking back at Cowell before pointing to Paul Potts, ‘you sponge off him then?’ Prince Philip insisted that he did not know enough about Simon Cowell to insult him, but Piers Morgan was adamant. ‘I can categorically say it happened,’ he said.

  In 2012, Prince Philip showed some concern for the Canadian quartet The Tenors who gave a performance at Windsor Castle for the Diamond Jubilee. Before the show, he said: ‘I hope your voices don’t break in the show.’ They were all in their twenties.

  At his seventieth birthday party at Windsor Castle, Prince Philip was introduced to Terrie Doherty, head of Sony Music Regional Promotion in London. ‘God,’ he said. ‘Do you have to speak to those awful DJ chappies?’

  At a medieval fayre in Old Windsor, a young woman in costume had found a quiet corner to breast-feed her baby. Prince Philip spotted her and announced loudly: ‘Oh look everyone, she really taken the part to heart. She’s is breast feeding her child.’

  Prince Philip is not a man to be starstruck. When Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett told him that she worked ‘in the film industry,’ he asked her whether she could fix his DVD player, saying: ‘There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you tell me where it goes?’ After Cate explained that this was really not her province as she was an actress, he ‘seemed a bit non-plussed.’ Miss. Blanchett has played Elizabeth I on screen twice, though she has yet to play Elizabeth II.

  If a DVD player was not puzzling enough, in 2001, he told students at Sussex University that he was equally non-plussed with the TV, saying he had to scrabble around on the floor with a torch and magnifying glass to find the switch to turn it on. ‘The only thing you need to know is how to turn it on and they try and hide it from you,’ he said. ‘To work out how to operate a TV you practically have to make love to the thing,’ he said in an
interview celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of a Design Council prize in his name.

  He also told Kevin McCloud, the presenter of Channel Four’s Grand Designs, of his frustration with modern technology. ‘They put the TV controls on the bottom so you had to lie on the floor,’ he said, ‘and then if you wanted to record something, the recorder was underneath, so you ended up lying on the floor with a torch in your teeth, a magnifying glass and an instruction book. Either that or you had to employ a grandson of age ten to do it for you.’ He wanted to know ‘why can’t you have a handset that people who are not ten years old can actually read?’ In addition to technological issues, he also railed against fascia panels in cars that were sometimes unreadable due to light reflection and complained about car fuel gauges that only told drivers how much fuel was left, not how much was needed to refill the tank.

  After failing to recognise Australian actress Cate Blanchett, Prince Philip was no more cognisant of home-grown celebrities. On the set of the soap EastEnders set in 2001, he asked Adam Woodyatt who had played Ian Beale since the show started in 1985: ‘Are you an actor or an operator?’

  At the premiere of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader he asked Simon Pegg, who played talking mouse Reepicheep: ‘When did you realise you had the voice of a mouse?’

  Australian stand-up comedian and TV presenter Adam Hills, who has a prosthetic limb, was told: ‘You could smuggle a bottle of gin out of the country in that artificial foot.’

  It seems that the Duke of Edinburgh was no fan of Poirot either. When lunching with the Queen and Prince Philip, David Suchet was confronted with a mango, but had no idea of how to peel it in polite company, so he turned to the Duke for advance. ‘You don’t peel a mango, you slice it,’ blustered the Prince, grabbing a knife to demonstrate. The so-called ‘mango incident’ found its way into the series. In the episode ‘The Royal Ruby,’ a fellow diner asks Poirot how he had learned to deal with a mango. ‘A certain duke taught me,’ he says.