READ SOME OF PRINCE PHILLIP’S SHOCKING GAFFES

*THE QUEEN has reportedly told Prince William and Prince Harry to stop “soul-baring” and be more stately like their grandfather**

Maam, the days of the “stiff British upper lip” are long gone.
And has Her Majesty forgotten that most times haffe-prone Prince Philip opened his mouth, what came out was offensive, insulting and downright bigoted in some cases.

Both Princes William and Harry have spoken out recently about their struggle of coming to terms with the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales as part of the Heads Together mental health campaign.

A royal source told the Sunday Times: “As successful as that campaign was, it might be that soul-baring isn’t what Buckingham Palace is looking for.

“The direct impact [of Prince Philip’s retirement] will be that the Cambridges will be expected to step up and undertake more state business and do less of their campaign work.”

One of the hardest working royals, the Duke of Edinburgh is patron, President or member of more than 780 organisations and charities.

The Queen is hoping another royal or public figure will step into his shoes – but whoever they are, they will not be quite the same…

Philip has made a series of public gaffes with his politically incorrect, off the cuff comments over the years. Some have been funny, others have been plain embarrassing.

Below are some of Prince Phillip’s classic gaffes:

1.After being told that Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme in 2002: “Are we going to need ear plugs?”

2. To a car park attendant who didn’t recognise him in 1997, he snapped: “You bloody silly fool!”

To Simon Kelner, republican editor of The Independent, at Windsor Castle reception: “What are you doing here?” “I was invited, sir.” Philip: “Well, you didn’t have to come.”

4. To female sea cadet: “Do you work in a strip club?”

To expats in Abu Dhabi in 2011: “Are you running away from something?”

6. After accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991: “Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.”

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?’”

8. To multi-ethnic Britain’s Got Talent 2009 winners Diversity: “Are you all one family?”

To President of Nigeria, who was in national dress, 2003: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”

10. His description of Beijing, during a visit there in 1986: “Ghastly.”

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.”

12. To deaf children by steel band, 2000: “Deaf? If you’re near there, no wonder you are deaf.”

To a tourist in Budapest in 1993: “You can’t have been here long, you haven’t got a pot belly.”

14. To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”

His verdict on Stoke-on-Trent, during a visit in 1997: “Ghastly.”

16. To Atul Patel at reception for influential Indians, 2009: “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”

Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: “It looks as though it was put in by an Indian.” He later backtracked: “I meant to say cowboys.”

18. To Lockerbie residents after plane bombing, 1993: “People say after a fire it’s water damage that’s the worst. We’re still drying out Windsor Castle.”

In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”

20. “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.” 1987

On the Duke of York’s house, 1986: “It looks like a tart’s bedroom.”

22. Using Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1997, he called him: “Reichskanzler.”

“We go into the red next year… I shall have to give up polo.” 1969.

24. At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”

To a woman solicitor, 1987: “I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.”

26. To a civil servant, 1970: “You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.”

On the 1981 recession: “A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now everybody’s got more leisure time they’re complaining they’re unemployed. People don’t seem to make up their minds what they want.”

28. On the new £18million British Embassy in Berlin in 2000: “It’s a vast waste of space.”

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?”

30. To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”

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!”

32. On Tom Jones, 1969: “It’s difficult to see how it’s possible to become immensely valuable by singing what are the most hideous songs.”

To the Scottish WI in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”

34. To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”

To Cayman Islanders: “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

36. To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

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.”

38. “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?” Kenya, 1984.

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.”

40. On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”