Prince Philip

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Shown his portrait by artist Stuart Pearson Wright, Prince Philip exclaimed: ‘Gadzooks!’ – a word that has not been in normal usage for nearly two hundred years. It means ‘God’s hooks,’ that is, the nails that pinned Christ to the cross. Asked if the painting was a good likeness, the prince said: ‘I bloody well hope not… As long as I don’t have to have it on the wall.’ He was depicted bare-chested with a fly on his shoulder and watercress sprouting from his index finger. ‘Why have you given me a great schonk?’ he demanded. The Sunday Times commented: ‘Uncanny, isn’t it, that when you paint a picture of Prince Philip, the insults just seem to follow you around the room?’ The Daily Telegraph pointed out that the word ‘schonk’ – presumably meaning nose – was a new coinage. It seems to be a hybrid of ‘schnozzle’ and ‘conk.’ In the past, Prince Philip had been a ‘trifle sniffy’ where new words were concerned, the paper said. In 1982, he compiled a list for Logophile magazine of what he called his ‘Fourteen Most Ugsome Words.’ They were 1) Nihilism 2) Macho 3) Charismatic 4) Pseudo- 5) Audio- 6) Socio- 7) Upcoming 8) Avant-garde 9) Conurbation 10) Camp 11) Obscene 12) Gay 13) Logophile 14) Imperialism‘These are parasitic words,’ he explained. ‘They make no sense on their own and don’t improve the words to which they are added.’

  The prince did not have much better luck with artist John Orr RA, who was painting his official portrait as president of the Naval and Military Club. He told Orr that, in the days of empire, cannibals got mad cow disease, but ‘it just disappeared when they stopped eating each other.’

  At the Royal Variety Performance in Blackpool in 2009, Prince Philip asked the eleven members of the multi-ethnic dance troupe Diversity at the 2009 Royal Variety Performance: ‘Are you all one family?’ Obviously not, Prince Philip compounded the folly by then asking the troupe: ‘Did you all come over just for this show?’ ‘I thought, no they’re from London,’ said comic Jason Manford. ‘They’ve done the same journey you have.’

  When Prince Philip sat in the royal box with the Queen at the Royal Variety Show watching the stripping scene from The Full Monty, he turned to biographer Gyles Brandreth and said: ‘Don’t worry, she’s been to Papua New Guinea and seen it all before.’

  Backstage at the Adelphi Theatre in London, chorus girls from the hit show Chicago clad in fishnet stockings, high heels, skimpy shorts and bra tops flocked around the prince. ‘Where on earth do you keep your microphones?’ he asked. The hoofers told him that their radio mics were hidden in their hair.

  When Elton John told near-neighbour Prince Philip in 2001 that he had sold his gold Aston Martin, the prince replied: ‘Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car – we often see it when driving to Windsor Castle.’ But then, he was never a great fan of Elton John. In 2001, at the Seventy-third Royal Variety Show, Elton performed three songs with his back to the royal box. The Queen said: ‘I wish he would turn the microphone to one side.’ Prince Philip said: ‘I wish he’d turn the microphone off!’ Again the prince proved himself a bastion of good sense.

  Architecture

  Prince Philip plainly shares some of his son Prince Charles’ conservative views on architecture. Reviewing the plans for the twelve-bedroom mansion Prince Andrew, Duke of York, shared with his wife Sarah Ferguson at Sunninghill Park, he said: ‘It looks like a tart’s bedroom.’ The press then dubbed it South York after South Fork, the ranch house in the TV soap Dallas. After the break-up of Prince Andrew’s marriage, the mansion was sold to Kazakh businessman Timur Kulibayev for more than £3 million above the asking price of £12 million and was then left to rot.

  Prince Philip told residents of tower blocks that they would be better off if their flats were pulled down, though that would render them homeless.

  In 1958, he told architects in Scotland: ‘I think is worth remembering, when you look around, that everything that has not been made by God, has probably been perpetrated by an architect.’ And he had come up with an ingenious way of spotting the guilty men at a distance: ‘All architects wear ties with horizontal strips… or no ties at all.’

  He had another go at architects in Ghana the following year. Addressing a luncheon during a state visit there, he said: ‘If I attempted to visit or have lunch with all the institutions, associations and groups which are involved in the development of Ghana at this particularly important moment in her history, I would have to stay here very much longer. Therefore, I am very pleased that the surveyors, engineers and architects have all got together today to arrange this very pleasant function. It has allowed me to hit three professional bodies with one brick, which is a much more interesting occupation than throwing stones at birds.’

  At luncheon at the Modular Society in 1962, he said: ‘Without wishing to be rude in any way, anything which encourages architects to occasionally break away from the cigar box and gasometer-line ought to be encouraged.’

  Noting that a large new building had recently replaced what had used to be a brewery, he said: ‘I am not quite sure which is worse, the sight which is there now, or the smell which used to be there.’

  MP Chris Mullin put his foot in it when visiting the new GCHQ building in Cheltenham with Prince Philip in 2004. ‘Would Charles approve?’ asked Mullin. ‘Charles who?’ the prince replied.

  Having made himself the enemy of architects, Prince Philip endeared himself to accountants when he told a gag to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants: ‘Three accountants go for a job interview and are asked to add up two plus two. The first accountant thinks for a bit and says ‘five.’ The second punches the numbers into his calculator and comes up with ‘four’ while the third replies, “The answer can be whatever you want.”’ Ian Welch, head of corporate communications at ACCA, also noted: ‘When he was introduced to our creative department he looked bemused – until it was explained that they handle things like the website rather than create figures.’

  Prince Philip chaired a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in 2004 about Prince Albert and his contribution to the Great Exhibition of 1851. During questions, one lady Fellow remarked: ‘I understand that the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition appears to have been built on time. With the advances of modern technology, why can’t we do the same today? The Millennium Dome had its problems, and, with great respect to your Royal Highness, the Athens Olympics seems destined to be seriously delayed.’ Sticking up for his homeland, the prince piped up: ‘It’s Paris that has the problems not Greece – look at Charles de Gaulle Airport.’

  The theatre

  At a gala performance of Cameron Mackintosh’s musical Betty Blue Eyes in aid of the Grenadier Guards – one of the regiments Prince Philip is colonel of – he saw himself and his wife portrayed on stage. Afterwards he told Annalisa Rossi, who played the Queen: ‘You remind me of somebody…’ Dan Burton played the prince as he had been sixty-four years earlier. While the Prince’s hair was now thinning, he pointed to Burton’s luxuriant wig and said: ‘I like the hair.’

  At the premiere of True Blue, a film funded by Channel Four, Prince Philip said to the channel’s chairman Sir Michael Bishop: ‘So you’re responsible for the kind of crap Channel Four produces!’ The prince then asked another executive what he did. The producer of True Blue replied: ‘I commission the kind of crap you’re going to see.’

  After the Royal Variety Performance in 2003, Prince Philip said of the ever-youthful Donny Osmond: ‘Will someone please give some grey hair to this kid?’ Osmond was forty-five.

  Praising the courage of an avant-garde artist, Prince Philip said: ‘ She had the courage to send in a pair of kippers to this year’s Royal Academy Exhibition and have them hung.’

  Food and Drink

  For a man of simple tastes, Prince Philip complained about the rich food served up at state dinners. ‘I never see any home cooking,’ he said. ‘All I get is fancy stuff.’ Examining the French menu at one gala bash, he remarked sarcastically: ‘Oh good, fish and chips again.’

  The entertainment was up to much at state ban
quets either. After a particularly boring speech, he said to toast-master Ivor Spencer: ‘At least you get paid for this.’

  In 1964, he did conceded that ‘British food is like a small child. When it’s good it’s very, very good’ when it’s bad, it’s absolutely awful.’ But, he rued in 2007: ‘Lunches are seldom free.’

  Tony Blair also recounted how during a weekend barbecue at Balmoral – ‘a vivid combination of the intriguing, the surreal and the utterly freaky’ – Prince Philip did the cooking while the Queen donned rubber gloves and washed the dishes. This might be due to the Prince’s school of thought that, as he mentioned to the Scottish Women’s Institute in1961, ‘British women can’t cook.’

  The royal couple had problem with the thick icing on an elaborate fruit cake at the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The cake, which was shaped like Kew’s famous Palm House and took sixty hours to bake was resistant to the Queen’s cake knife, prompting Philip to shout: ‘Cut it properly. Press down harder!’ The Queen scowled at Philip before stepping aside and suggesting he take the knife. He then said: ‘Let’s just check if it really is a cake because sometimes they aren’t.’ Confirming that it was a real cake, he launched into a number of confectionary jokes.

  Early on in their marriage, the royal couple had other problems with cake. They were crossing the water to Vancouver Island in Canada. The weather was unsettled and the ship was rocking violent. Just as a young petty officer arrived in the royal suite, the ship lurched and the tray of tea cakes he was holding crashed to the floor. The prince fell to his knees and helped to gather them up. After retrieving a handful of cakes, he returned to his seat. Turning to Princess Elizabeth he remarked, ‘I’ve got mine – yours are down there.’

  At the Royal Dairy Show in 1965, he said: ‘None of the beef I have eaten at this age is edible.’

  After competing in Hungary in 2004, he said: ‘The most dangerous part of that tournament was visiting the Hungarian camp, because whatever the time of day, they gave you a glass of peach brandy and you were lucky to escape with your life.’ The food was also a danger. He famously told a British visitor in Budapest in 1993: ‘You can’t have been here long – you haven’t got a pot belly.’

  On being offered the finest Italian wines to wash down the exquisite young goat and chestnut served up by Prime Minister Giuliano Amato at a dinner in Rome in 2000, Prince Philip declined, saying: ‘Get me a beer. I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!’ He pulled the same trick at banquet in Germany in 2004. ‘Try the German wine, sir,’ said a diplomat. ‘It’s from the most northern vineyard in the world.’ Philip replied in German, saying only: ‘I’ll have a beer.’

  He did not get on much better with French food. After award-winning French chef Regis Crépy provided a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat at his floating pub Il Punto on the river Orwell at Ipswich, Prince Philip remarked: ‘French cooking’s all very well, but they can’t do a decent English breakfast.’ Perhaps the Prince was just sticking up for the full English and echoing novelist W. Somerset Maugham who said: ‘To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day.’

  Invited to a luncheon in 1974, Philip said: ‘It is a myth that I eat grilled journalists for breakfast.’

  Offered some fish from Rick Stein’s Seafood Deli, he said: ‘No, I would probably end up spitting it out over everybody.’ Employee Louise Atkinson said she was convinced that the Duke had not meant to insult her boss or his cooking. ‘He was very interested in where our fish came from. Then he just came out with that remark. I think he meant it was rather crumbly and he was worried he would spray it over the next people he was going to meet,’ she said.

  At a dinner party in 2004, he said: ‘Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner.’ And he likes a tipple. When presented with a food hamper by the US ambassador to the court of St James, he asked: ‘Where’s the Southern Comfort?’ However, he is sometimes not so tolerant when others are in their cups. On once occasion he snapped at the senior naval officers who had two martinis before lunch: ‘Well admiral, what you think? – that is, if you’re capable of thinking.’

  Proposing a toast at the Land Agents’ Society Jubilee Dinner in 1953, he said: ‘First of all may I thank you very much indeed for a most excellent and enormous dinner. I cannot help thinking that if this is your usual standard, then I suggest that land agents should eat half as much and then we should not have to produce twice as much food… I was surprised to learn that it was only fifty years ago that you decided to get together. But, speaking as a landowner, or a part landowner, it is just as well to learn that you did not get together sooner.’

  The Royal Society of Medicine had attained its 150th anniversary in 1964 and Prince Philip was invited to address their jubilee dinner. ‘If I don’t know anything about medicine, at least I can claim to be an expert on anniversary dinners,’ he said. ‘Nearly one hundred and fifty anniversary dinners – what a splendid thought. How many tons of food? How many gallons of wine? And how many hours of speeches have gone into your history? And how many cracks about “physician heal thyself ” afterwards?’

  At Bourke, New South Wales, Prince Philip visited a fruit farm. Commenting on the way the produce was packaged, he said: ‘Oh, you’re going in for this business of keeping people out of the food. No way can you open the bloody thing.’ This came the day after a visit to a cheese factory in Wagga Wagga, where he ruined an entire day’s production by refusing to wear sterile clothes.

  As the Queen opened the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Malta in 2005, the eighty-four-year-old Prince Philip was touring a food canning factory on its sister island of Gozo, wearing a hairnet over his thinning locks. Staff presented him with two specially prepared jars of spicy fruit, telling him they would send him two tins every year for the rest of his life. ‘You won’t have to do that for very long then,’ the prince retorted. He then watched bottles of ketchup being labelled and packed. Spotting a worker wearing large, white gumboots, asked: ‘What have you been doing – treading tomatoes?’

  Lynwood Westray is the famous White House butler who served eight presidents over thirty-two years. When the Queen and Prince Philip visited President Jimmy Carter in 1979, Westray asked the prince: ‘Your majesty, would you like a cordial?’ Westray should, of course, have called him ‘Your Royal Highness.’ But this breathtaking breach of protocol paid dividends. Prince Philip said: ‘I’ll take one if you’ll let me serve you.’ Later, Westray said: ‘Oh my God, this had never happened before. There we were standing there. I was holding the glasses and my buddy was holding the liqueurs and we looked at each other, and I said: ‘If that’s the only way you’ll have it, we’ll go along with it.’ And the prince served us what he was having, and the three of us had a drink and a conversation. It was an honour to let him do it.’

  All Creatures Great and Small

  Although Prince Philip served as the president of the World Wildlife Fund from its founding in 1961, he has always been keen of field sports. Over his lifetime, he is estimated to have shot over 150,000 pheasants, usually those bred for the purpose on the royal estate at Sandringham. However, leading a shooting party in 2004, he made a slight miscalculation. They were shooting game near the edge of the estate, with the dead birds plummeting to the ground some twenty yards from the playground of a local school. The gundogs dutifully collected the carcasses, but the carnage left the young pupils in tears in what was considered by the tabloids as a gaffe – albeit a non-verbal one.

  In 1957, long before he became president of the World Wildlife Fund, Prince Philip shot a crocodile in The Gambia. Two of the three species of crocodiles there are on the endangered species list. ‘It’s not a very big one, but at least it’s dead and it took an awful lot of killing!’

  Even when he went on to become president of the World Wildlife Fund in 1981, he continued to defend his own interest in hunting. Comparing blood sports to a b
utcher killing animals to sell meat, in 1988 he said: ‘I don’t think doing it [killing animals] for money makes it any more moral. I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing. It is really rather like saying it is perfectly all right to commit adultery providing you don’t enjoy it.’

  Wading into the fox-hunting debate in 2004, Prince Philip said: ‘Fox hunting is a curious thing to ban, because of all the blood sports it’s the only one where the people following it don’t come anywhere near a wild animal at all.’

  At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, Prince Philip courted controversy by saying: ‘Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: “Kill a cat and save a bird?”’ In 2008, he persisted in that view, saying: ‘People don’t like to admit it, but cats catch an enormous number of small wild birds. But people are very attached to their cats – it’s a fact of life.’ His view is supported by leading New Zealand economist and environmentalist Gareth Morgan who, in 2013, proposed that his homeland be made a cat-free country to preserve its wildlife.

  Prince Philip also gave advice to a rabbit breeder on Anguilla in 1994: ‘Don’t feed your rabbits pawpaw fruit – it acts as a contraceptive. Then again, it might not work on rabbits.’ He had an affection for the fruit. The villagers of Yaohnanen on Vanuatu believe that their god, Prince Philip, will return when the pawpaw is ripe. Instead he suggested the Anguillans eat, instead, their wild goats. ‘You only need some idiot to let some rabbits escape and they will be all over the place,’ he said.