Prince Philip’s Most Glorious Gaffes

Compiled by a Colleague

[N.S.: Truth be told, in many of these cases, I can't see what the "gaffe" was.] 1 “British women can’t cook” (in Britain, in 1966).
2 “What do you gargle with, pebbles?” (speaking to singer Tom Jones, after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance).
3 “I declare this thing open, whatever it is” (on a visit to Canada in 1969).
4 “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed” (during the 1981 recession).
5 “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 airplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it” (at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting).
6 “It looks like a tart’s bedroom” (on seeing plans for the Duke and Duchess of York’s house at Sunninghill Park in 1988).
7 “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).
8 “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).
9 “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).
10 “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.)
11 “Bloody silly fool!” (in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who did not recognize him).
12 “It looks as if it was put in by an Indian” (pointing at an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh in 1999).
13 “Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf” (to young deaf people in Cardiff, in 1999, referring to a school’s steel band).
14 “They must be out of their minds” (in the Solomon Islands, in 1982, when he was told that the annual population growth was 5 percent).
15 “You are a woman, aren’t you?” (In Kenya, in 1984, after accepting a small gift from a local woman).
16 “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed” (to British students in China, during the 1986 state visit).
17 “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).
18 “Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease” (in Australia, in 1992, when asked to stroke a koala bear).
19 “You can’t have been here that long — you haven’t got a pot belly” (to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, in 1993).
20 “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” (To a wealthy islander in the Cayman Islands in 1994.)
21 “You managed not to get eaten, then?” (Suggesting to a student in 1998 who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea that tribes there were still cannibals.)
22 In Germany, in 1997, he welcomed German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a trade fair as “Reichskanzler” — the last German leader who used the title was Adolf Hitler.
23 “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.)
24 “I wish he’d turn the microphone off.” (Muttered at the Royal Variety Performance, as he watched Sir Elton John perform, 2001.)
25 “Do you still throw spears at each other?” (In Australia in 2002, talking to a successful aborigine entrepreneur.)
26 “You look like a suicide bomber.” (To a young female officer wearing a bullet-proof vest on Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, in 2002.)
27 “Do you know they’re now producing eating dogs for anorexics?” (To a blind woman outside Exeter Cathedral, 2002.)
28 “Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?” (To designer Stephen Judge, about his tiny goatee beard in July, 2009.)
29 “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).
30 “Do you work in 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.)
31 “Do you have a pair of knickers made out of this?” pointing to some tartan (to Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie at a papal reception in Edinburgh in September, 2010).
32 “Bits are beginning to drop off” (on approaching his 90th birthday, 2011).
33 “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.)
34 “(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).
35 “Just take the f---ing picture!” (losing patience with an RAF photographer at events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain — July, 2015).
36 “You look starved” (to a pensioner on a visit to the Charterhouse almshouse for elderly men — February, 2017).
37 “I’m just a bloody amoeba” (on the Queen’s decision that their children should be called Windsor, not Mountbatten).
38 “Gentlemen, I think it is time we pulled our fingers out” (to the Industrial Co-Partnership Association on Britain’s inefficient industries in 1961).
39 “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).
40 “If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity” (on a man who tried to kidnap the Princess Royal in 1974).
41 “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she’s not interested” (on the Princess Royal).
42 “I hope he breaks his bloody neck” (when a photographer covering a royal visit to India fell out of a tree).
43 “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).
44 “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).
45 “Most stripping is done by hand” (to 83-year-old Mars factory worker Audrey Cook, when discussing how she used to strip or cut Mars Bars by hand in April 2013).
46 “When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife” (on marriage).
47 “It’s a pleasant change to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people” (to Alfredo Stroessner, the Paraguayan dictator).