"I would like to go to Russia very much, although the bastards murdered half my family"- the Duke of Edinburgh's best gaffes
The Duke asked a British student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
To Australian Aborigines during a visit to Australia with the Queen he asked: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"
During the recession he mused: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."
A selection of notable quotes as he offers his own unique advice to people all over the world
To Australian Aborigines during a visit to Australia with the Queen he asked: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"
During the recession he mused: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."
A selection of notable quotes as he offers his own unique advice to people all over the world
1963
Speaking about the rate of British tax, he said: "All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury."
1965
On seeing an exhibition of "primitive" Ethiopian art, he muttered: "It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons."
1966
The Duke famously proclaimed: "British women can't cook".
1967
When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union: "I would like to go to Russia very much, although the bastards murdered half my family."
1969
The Duke said to Tom Jones after his Royal Variety Performance: "What do you gargle with, pebbles?".
He later added: "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."
On the Royal Family's finances: "We go into the red next year. I shall probably have to give up polo."
1976
On a tour of Canada: "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves."
1981
During the recession he mused: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."
1984
When accepting a figurine from a woman during a visit to Kenya he asked: "You are a woman aren't you?"
1986
He told a World Wildlife Fund meeting that "if it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it."
Prince Philip's opinion of Beijing, during a tour of China in 1986, was simply: "Ghastly."
1993
To a British tourist in Hungary in he quipped: "You can't have been here that long — you haven't got a pot belly."
To survivors of the Lockerbie bombing he told them: "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still drying out Windsor Castle."
1994
"Aren't most of you descended from pirates?", he asked an islander in the Cayman Islands.
To a Caribbean rabbit breeder in Anguilla, he said: "Don't feed your rabbits pawpaw fruit — it acts as a contraceptive. Then again, it might not work on rabbits."
1995
He asked a Scottish driving instructor in Oban: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?"
1996
Following the Dunblane massacre, he questioned the need for a firearms ban: "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?"
1998
The Duke asked a British student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
1999
In Cardiff he told children from the British Deaf Association, who were standing by a Caribbean steel band: "If you're near that music it's no wonder you're deaf"...
