Prince Philip
His sayings will not be forgotten
Prince Philip died at the age of 99.
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Prince Philip always gave way to his wife. With his partly loose mouth, he still stole the show from the Queen from time to time.
The world mourns Prince Philip. The husband of Queen Elizabeth II (94) died on Friday (April 9th) at the age of 99 at Windsor Castle. Although he has always let his wife go first in her position as head of the British monarchy, he nonetheless caused a stir, headlines or even outrage at one point or another. Not least because of some of the sayings that the Duke of Edinburgh slipped off the lips on official occasions.
Controversial handling of foreign cultures
“Where did you get this hat?”, Prince Philip asked his wife after her coronation on June 2, 1953.
“First everyone is demanding more free time, then they complain that they are unemployed,” he is said to have said in the 1981 recession.
“Aren’t there any male civil servants here? It’s a nanny town,” joked Prince Philip in 1983 in San Francisco at a meeting with the city’s mayor and some of the city’s women employees.
“If you stay here too long, you will get slanted eyes,” he is reported to have said to a British student in China in 1986.
“If it has four legs and is not a chair, if it has two wings and flies, but is not an airplane and if it swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it,” said the Prince Consort as WWF Honorary President in 1986 25th anniversary of the organization.
About trips abroad and Dracula’s daughters
“In the end I hurt the animal – and God knows we had enough mutton during this visit,” replied Prince Philip in New Zealand in 1992 when asked whether he would like to shear a sheep.
“The water damage after a fire is usually the worst. We’re still trying to get Windsor Castle dry,” he said during the 1993 Lockerbie Aircraft Crash Visit (1988) – Windsor Castle was on fire in 1992.
“There used to be no therapists running around asking after every rifle shot whether you were okay. You just kept going,” he said in 1995 on the subject of coping with stress for soldiers in a TV report.
“So you managed not to be eaten?” Asked Prince Philip in 1998 in Papua New Guinea a student who had wandered the country.
“You look like Dracula’s daughters,” he wrote to the students at Queen Anne’s School in Reading in 1998 – and probably just wanted to refer to their blood-red uniforms.
Sensitivity looks different
In February 2001, Prince Philip presented the Duke of Edinburgh Award in Cardiff and asked whether there might be more participants if the award were named after someone else. His answer: “Some would still think the price is nonsense. And others don’t care if it’s named after a grumpy old geezer.”
“I wish he would turn the microphone to the other side,” Queen Elizabeth II is said to have said in 2001 at an Elton John appearance. The Prince Consort then: “I wish he would turn it off.”
“Do you still throw spears at each other?”, He asked Australian natives in 2002. One is said to have answered him politely: “No, we won’t do that anymore”.
“How on earth do you get that under your helmet?” Asked Prince Philip in 2003 to a police officer who was wearing a turban to Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas party.
“When a man opens the car door for a woman, it can mean two things: Either it’s a new woman or a new car,” he joked in 2004, according to his biographer Gyles Brandreth.
“Opening and closing ceremonies should be banned. They are a damned nuisance. I’ve really had enough of them,” said the Prince Consort in 2006 on the occasion of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.