R.I.P. Prince Philip.
His best quips:
‘British women can’t cook’
(at the Scottish Women's Institute in 1961)
‘What do you gargle with, pebbles?’
(speaking to singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance)
‘I declare this thing open, whatever it is.’
(on a visit to Canada in 1969)
‘Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed’
(during the 1981 recession)
'It's a vast waste of space.'
(Philip entertained guests in 2000 at the reception of a new £18m British Embassy in Berlin, which the Queen had just opened)
‘If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.’
(at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)
‘It looks like a tart’s bedroom.’
(on seeing plans for the Duke and Duchess of York’s house at Sunninghill Park in 1988)
‘Yak, yak, yak; come on get a move on.’
(shouted from the deck of Britannia in Belize in 1994 to the Queen who was chatting to her hosts on the quayside)
'We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking “Are you all right? Are you sure you don’t have a ghastly problem?” You just got on with it.’
(about the Second World War commenting on modern stress counselling for servicemen in 1995)
‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?’
(to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, during a 1995 walkabout)
‘If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?'
(in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)
‘Bloody silly fool!’
(in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who did not recognise him)
‘It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.’
(pointing at an old-fashioned fusebox in a factory near Edinburgh in 1999)
‘Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.’
(to young deaf people standing next to the school's steel band, in Cardiff in 1999).
‘They must be out of their minds.’
(in the Solomon Islands, in 1982, when he was told that the annual population growth was 5%)
‘You are a woman, aren’t you?’
(In Kenya, in 1984, after accepting a small gift from a local woman)
‘If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.’
(to British students in China, during the 1986 state visit)
'Ghastly'
(his opinion of Beijing during the 1986 visit)
'Ghastly'
(also his opinion of Stoke-on-Trent during a visit in 1997)
‘Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car is it? We often see it when driving to Windsor Castle.’
(to Elton John in regards to his Watford-themed Rolls Royce in 2001)
'I would like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.'
(in 1967, asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union)
‘Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world.’
(in Thailand, in 1991, after accepting a conservation award)
'Oh! You are the people ruining the rivers and the environment.'
(to three young employees of a Scottish fish farm at Holyrood Palace in 1999)
‘Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.’
(in Australia, in 1992, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)
‘You can’t have been here that long – you haven’t got a pot belly.’
(to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, in 1993)
‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’
(to a wealthy islander in the Cayman Islands in 1994)
‘You managed not to get eaten, then?’
(to a student in 1998 who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea)
'Damn fool question!'
(to BBC journalist Caroline Wyatt at a banquet at the Elysée Palace after she asked Queen Elizabeth if she was enjoying her stay in Paris in 2006)
'Willkommen, Herr Reichskanzler'
(to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl - a title last used by Adolf Hitler)
‘You’re too fat to be an astronaut.’
(to 13-year-old Andrew Adams who told Philip he wanted to go into space. Salford, 2001)
‘I wish he’d turn the microphone off.’
(muttered at the Royal Variety Performance as he watched Sir Elton John perform, 2001)
‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’
(In Australia in 2002 talking to a successful aborigine entrepreneur).
‘You look like a suicide bomber.’
(to a young female officer wearing a bullet-proof vest on Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, in 2002).
‘Do you know they’re now producing eating dogs for anorexics?’
(to a blind woman outside Exeter Cathedral, 2002)
‘Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?’
(to designer Stephen Judge about his tiny goatee beard in July 2009).
‘There’s a lot of your family in tonight.’
(after looking at the name badge of businessman Atul Patel at a Palace reception for British Indians in October 2009).
‘Do you work at a strip club?’
(to 24-year-old Barnstaple Sea Cadet Elizabeth Rendle when she told him she also worked in a nightclub in March 2010)
'And what exotic part of the world do you come from?'
(asked in 1999 of Tory politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, whose parents are Jamaican. He replied: "Birmingham.")
‘Do you have a pair of knickers made out of this?’ pointing to some tartan
(to Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie a papal reception in Edinburgh in September 2010)
‘How many people have you knocked over this morning on that thing?’
(meeting disabled David Miller who drives a mobility scooter at the Valentine Mansion in Redbridge in March 2012)
'Were you here in the bad old days? ... That's why you can't read and write then!'
(to parents during a visit to Fir Vale Comprehensive School in Sheffield, which had suffered poor academic reputation)
‘I would get arrested if I unzipped that dress.’
(to 25-year-old council worker Hannah Jackson, who was wearing a dress with a zip running the length of its front, on a Jubilee visit to Bromley, Kent, in May 2012)
‘The Philippines must be half empty as you’re all here running the NHS.’
(on meeting a Filipino nurse at a Luton hospital in February 2013)
‘(Children) go to school because their parents don’t want them in the house.’
(prompting giggles from Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban after campaigning for the right of girls to go to school without fear – October 2013)
‘Just take the fucking picture.’
(losing patience with an RAF photographer at events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain – July 2015)
‘You look starved.’
(to a pensioner on a visit to the Charterhouse almshouse for elderly men – February 2017)
'My son...er...owns them.'
(on being asked on a Canadian tour whether he knew the Scilly Isles)
‘I’m just a bloody amoeba.’
(on the Queen’s decision that their children should be called Windsor, not Mountbatten)
‘Are you asking me if the Queen is going to die?’
(on being questioned on when the Prince of Wales would succeed to the throne)
'So who's on drugs here?... HE looks as if he's on drugs'
(to a 14-year-old member of a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002)
‘If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity.’
(On a gunman who tried to kidnap the Princess Royal in 1974)
'I'd much rather have stayed in the Navy, frankly.'
(when asked what he felt about his life in 1992)
‘I hope he breaks his bloody neck.’
(when a photographer covering a royal visit to India fell out of a tree)
‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she’s not interested.’
(on the Princess Royal)
‘When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.’
(on marriage)
‘It’s a pleasant change to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.’
(to Alfredo Stroessner, the Paraguayan dictator)
‘Where did you get that hat?’
(supposedly to Queen at her Coronation)
'People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still drying out Windsor Castle.'
(to survivors of the Lockerbie bombings in 1993)
'In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.'
(said at an event in 1988)
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