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Quotes of Prince Philip


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Quotes of Prince Philip

* The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined.

o About to disembark on state visit to Brazil, November 1968. (quoted in Andrew Duncan, The Reality of Monarchy)

* You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.

o In a conversation with the matron of a hospital while on a tour of the Caribbean, 1966. (quoted in Andrew Duncan, The Reality of Monarchy)

* It seems to me that it's the best way of wasting money that I know of. I don't think investments on the moon pay a very high dividend.

o On the U.S. Apollo program, press conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 1968. (quoted in Andrew Duncan, The Reality of Monarchy)

* How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?

o Said to a driving instructor in Scotland, he asked; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.

o Said in 1986 to a group of British students in China; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* You are a woman, aren't you?

o After accepting a gift from a Kenyan woman; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it. (1986)

o "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* British women can't cook. (1966)

o "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* You managed not to get eaten then?

o Said to a British student in Papua New Guinea; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle.

o Said on a visit to Lockerbie in 1993 to a man who lived in a road where eleven people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet. "Prince Philip's gaffes", BBC, August 10, 1999.

* Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.

o On a visit to the new National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff, said to a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band; "Deaf insulted by duke's remark", BBC, May 27, 1999.; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* Do you still throw spears at each other?

o Said in 2002 to a Indigenous Australian businessman; "Prince Philip's spear 'gaffe'", BBC, March 1, 2002.; "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* You can't have been here that long — you haven't got a pot belly.

o Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary (1993); "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* Aren't most of you descended from pirates?

o Said in 1994 to an inhabitant of the Cayman Islands); "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed. (In 1981, in reference to the economic recession.)

o "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages.

o Said while presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student. When informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania for six months, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans and was told that he was not; "Duke under fire for Romanian orphans 'joke'", Scotsman, July 8, 2006.

* "Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut."

o Said at the University of Salford to a 13-year-old aspiring astronaut, who was wishing to fly the NOVA rocket; "Gift of the gaffe: Prince Philip’s top ten embarrassing moments", Daily Mirror, December 14, 2009.

* A gun is no more dangerous than a cricket bat in the hands of a madman.

o "Deaf insulted by duke's remark", BBC, May 27, 1999.

* In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.

o Foreword to Fleur Cowles, If I Were an Animal (William Morrow, publisher, 1987, ISBN 9780688061500)

* Do you know they're now producing eating dogs for the anorexics?

o Said in 2002 to a blind, wheelchair-bound woman who was accompanied by her guide dog; News - Telegraph.

* [That fuse box] "It looks as if it was put in by an Indian."

o Whilst on a tour of a factory in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1999 Prince Philip pointed out a fuse box that looked quite old. "Long line of princely gaffes", BBC, March 1, 2002.

* How can you tell the difference between them?

o Said to United States President Barack Obama after being told that Obama had met with The Chinese and Russian ambassadors along with David Cameron "Prince Philip makes a faux pas", Youtube, April 1, 2009.

* "There's a lot of your family in tonight"

o Said in November 2009 to a Mr Patel (common Indian Surname) at a reception for 400 British Indian businessmen at Buckingham Palace

* "Are you all one family?"

o Said to black dance troupe Diversity at the 2009 Royal Variety Performance; "Prince Philip asks Diversity, 'Are you all one family?'", The Mirror, December 20, 2009.

* "Oh, what, a strip club?"

o Response to Elizabeth Rendle, a 24-year-old, who, when introduced to the prince, said that she worked as a barmaid in a nightclub. "Prince Philip in strip club gaffe", Yahoo! News, March 12, 2010.

prince+phillip.jpg

Too many lol's

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Guest WAVESURFER

* Do you know they're now producing eating dogs for the anorexics?

o Said in 2002 to a blind, wheelchair-bound woman who was accompanied by her guide dog; News - Telegraph.

i dnt get this one

Blind people can't see-------------->Guide Dogs

Anorexic people can't/won't eat-------------->"Eating Dogs"

But that wouldn't work, you see?

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* Do you know they're now producing eating dogs for the anorexics?

o Said in 2002 to a blind, wheelchair-bound woman who was accompanied by her guide dog; News - Telegraph.

i dnt get this one

Blind people can't see-------------->Guide Dogs

Anorexic people can't/won't eat-------------->"Eating Dogs"

But that wouldn't work, you see?

i c

he blatantly thought that was hilarious before he said it

its not that its poor taste cos everything else is, this is jus sh*t

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There is no end to the pars

Is Prince Philip an island god?

Britain's Duke of Edinburgh may be planning a quiet birthday celebration at home this weekend, but there will be feasting and flag-waving in an isolated jungle village in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where he is worshipped as a god.

The Land Cruiser ground up the rough dirt track, pitching and rolling like a boat. The trail was so severely eroded that it was more like a river bed, with miniature canyons gouged out by the monsoon rains.

I had been drawn to this poor excuse for a road by a story so unlikely that it sounded barely credible.

It was one I had wanted to investigate for years.

Legend had it that there was a clutch of villages on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu which - as bizarre as it may seem - worshipped Prince Philip as a god.

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How and why they had chosen the Duke of Edinburgh, I had no idea. I fully expected the story to be either false, or wildly exaggerated.

After an hour's drive we pulled into a jungle clearing shaded by giant banyan trees.

A short walk led to the village of Yaohnanen, a collection of sagging thatched huts, banana trees and snotty-nosed little kids.

With the help of my driver-cum-interpreter, Lui, I was introduced to the chief of the village. Jack Naiva was a bright-eyed old man of about 80, with grey hair and a faded sarong wrapped around his wiry body.

I felt deeply foolish telling him I had come to his village to ask if he worshipped the Queen's husband.

I wondered if it was all some sort of elaborate joke.

Prince Philip gave permission for portraits to be sent from London.

photo_1281847916320-1-0.jpg

But the look on Chief Jack's face told me it was not. He dispatched one of the villagers and a few minutes later the man returned from a hut with three framed pictures.

They were all official portraits of the Prince.

The first, in black and white, looked like it was taken in the early 1960s.

The second was dated 1980 and showed the Prince holding a traditional pig-killing club - a present from the islanders.

The most recent was from seven years ago.

They had all been sent from London with the discreet permission of Prince Philip, who is apparently well aware that he is the subject of such distant adoration.

_43026131_princephillip300.jpg

Jack Naiva, chief of the village, has an official portrait of the Prince

Chief Jack squatted on the ground as he told me how the Prince Philip cult had come about.

It seems that it emerged some time in the 1960s, when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides.

For centuries, perhaps millennia, villagers had believed in an ancient story about the son of a mountain spirit venturing across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry.

They believed that unlike them, this spirit had pale skin.

Somehow the legend gradually became associated with Prince Philip, who had indeed married a rich and powerful lady.

Villagers would have seen his portrait - and that of the Queen - in government outposts and police stations run by British colonial officials.

Their beliefs were bolstered in 1974, when the Queen and Prince Philip made an official visit to the New Hebrides. Here was their ancestral spirit, resplendent in a white naval officer's uniform, come back to show off his bride.

"He's a god, not a man," the chief told me emphatically, pointing at the portraits.

Response to colonialism

None of the cult followers can read or write.

Prince Philip gave permission for portraits to be sent from London

They told me - somewhat amazingly - that it was only this year that they learnt the date of the Prince's birthday - 10 June.

As Philip turns 86 and they are planning to mark the occasion with a feast and ceremonial drinking of kava, an intoxicating brew made from the roots of a pepper tree which makes your mouth go numb.

They have even acquired a large Union flag which they are going to run up a bamboo flag pole.

It is easy to see all this as so much South Seas mumbo jumbo.

But that would be a grave mistake, anthropologists told me.

Millennial movements like this were a highly sophisticated response by islanders in the South Pacific to the arrival of colonialism and Christianity.

By combining the fundamentals of their ancient beliefs with new elements gleaned from their contact with the West, they were able to preserve their culture.

There is, of course, a delicious irony in all this.

Prince Philip, after all, is a man who has a reputation for making politically incorrect gaffes, often about foreigners.

He once advised British students not to stay too long in China for fear of becoming "slitty-eyed".

And he asked a group of stunned aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

The villagers of Tanna may live a life far removed from the splendour of Buckingham Palace and Balmoral in far away Britain. But they are as firm in their beliefs as Prince Philip is in his.

I suspect that if they were ever to meet, they would get along rather well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6734469.stm

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