I love these Prince Philip quotes:


Meeting Aborigines in Australia: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"

At a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting: "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."

Asking a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass test?"

Told to a Briton in Hungary: "You can't have been here that long, you haven't got a pot belly."

During a state visit to China in 1986, he famously told a group of British students: "If you stay here much longer, you'll be all slitty-eyed!"

In 2001 he told a 13-year-old schoolboy he was 'too fat' to become an astronaut.

More recently he joked that the answer to London's traffic congestion was to 'ban tourists'.

Whilst on a tour of a factory in northern England, Prince Philip pointed out a fuse box that looked quite old. He said "it looks like it was made by an Indian!"

Said during a severe recession in 1981: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they're complaining they're unemployed."

On being introduced to the chairman of Britain's channel 4 television network: "So YOU'RE responsible for the kind of crap channel 4 produces."

On Fergie, the Duchess of York: "Her behavior was a bit odd. I don't see her because I do not see much point."

Comment when someone suggested in 1967 that a trip to Russia might improve diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Soviets: "The bastards murdered half my family."

To grieving residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, during a 1993 visit after a plane exploded and crashed into the town, killing everyone on board and several people on the ground (and shortly after a fire swept through ONE wing of Windsor Castle): "People usually say that after a fire it's the water damage that's the worst. We're STILL trying to dry out Windsor castle."

On French Canadians during a visit to Toronto: "I can't understand a word they say. They slur all their words."

To further insult Canadians during a royal visit: "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves."

"When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife."

"I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing."

At the official opening of the new £56 million mathematics center at Cambridge University: "This is a lot less expensive than the Dome...And I think it's going to be a lot more useful."

To his wife the Queen, immediately after her coronation: "Where did you get that hat?"

Said to Tom Jones after the The Royal Variety Performance: "What do you gargle with - pebbles?"

Said to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten, then?"

Said to a childrens band in Australia: "You were playing your instruments, weren't you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?"

Said to a blind woman with a guide dog: "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"

Said to an islander in the Cayman Islands: "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?"

Said in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award: "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world."

Said to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band: "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf."

Said amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting: "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?"

Said in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift: "You are a woman, aren't you?"

Said to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes: "You look like you're ready for bed!"

Overheard at Bristol University's BLADE (Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamic Engineering) facility, which had been closed in order that he and the Queen could officially open it: "It doesn't look like much work goes on at this University"