66 times Prince Philip was the best troll ever, as he performs his final public engagement today
The Duke of Edinburgh will perform his final public engagement today before he retires from royal duties.
The 96-year-old will meet with Royal Marines after completing 22,219 solo engagements since 1952.
Celebrate his seven decades of public service with 66 of the most memorable times he made ghastly public events bearable with his comedy/mostly hugely offensive gaffes.
1. “I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.”
2. “When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.”
3. “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.” 1987
4. “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.” 1967.
5. “People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” 2000.
6. “We go into the red next year… I shall have to give up polo.” 1969.
7. “Where’s the Southern Comfort?” When presented with a hamper of goods by US ambassador, 1999.
8. “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?” Kenya, 1984.
9. “You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.” To matron of Caribbean hospital, 1966.
10. A VIP at a local airport asked HRH: “What was your flight, like, Your Royal Highness? Philip: “Have you ever flown in a plane?” VIP: “Oh yes, sir, many times.” “Well,” said Philip, “it was just like that.”
11. After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy, 2002: “The French don’t know how to cook breakfast.”
12. After accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991: “Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.”
13. After being told that Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme in 2002: “Are we going to need ear plugs?”
14. After Dunblane massacre, 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?”
15. Asking Cate Blanchett to fix his DVD player because she worked “in the film industry”, 2008: “There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you tell me where it goes?”
16. At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:”So who’s on drugs here?… HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”
17. At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, he said: “Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?'”
18. At a Scottish fish farm: “Oh! You’re the people ruining the rivers.”
19. At a WF meeting in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
20. At an engineering school closed so he could officially open it, 2005: “It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this university.”
21. At City Hall in 2002: “If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”
22. At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
23. At Hertfordshire University, 2003: “During the Blitz, a lot of shops had their windows blown in and put up notices saying, ‘More open than usual’. I now declare this place more open than usual.”
24. At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”
25. His description of Beijing, during a visit there in 1986: “Ghastly.”
26. His verdict on Stoke-on-Trent, during a visit in 1997: “Ghastly.”
27. In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”
28. On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”
29. On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”
30. On seeing a piezo-meter water gauge in Australia: “A pissometer?”
31. On stress counselling for servicemen in 1995: “We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun. You just got on with it!”