Prince Philip was never afraid to speak his mind. But some of his public pronouncements gained headlines for the wrong reasons.
Here are a few of the things the prince said which caused controversy.
“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
To a driving instructor in Oban in 1995
“I declare this thing open, whatever it is.”
On a visit to Canada in 1969
“You’re too fat to be an astronaut!”
To a 13-year-old who told the prince he wanted to go into space, in 2001
“We didn’t have counsellors rushing about every time somebody
let off a gun, asking ‘Are you all right?’ You just got on with it.”
Commenting on modern stress counselling for service personnel
in 1996
“British women can’t cook.”
To members of the Scottish Women’s Institute in 1961
“Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now, they are complaining they are unemployed.”
During the 1981 recession
“What do you gargle with, pebbles?”
To the singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance
“The Philippines must be half empty because you’re all here running the NHS.”
To a Filipino nurse in Luton in 2013
“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”
To a wealthy islander in the Caymans in 1994
“Gentlemen, I think it’s time we pulled our fingers out.”
To the Industrial Co-Partnership Association about British industry in 1961
“If the man had succeeded in kidnapping Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity.”
On a gunman who attempted to kidnap the Princess Royal in 1974
“Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease”.
In Australia in 1992, when asked to stroke a koala bear
“Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
At the Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme in 2006
“You look like a suicide bomber”
To an officer wearing a bullet-proof vest on Stornoway in 2002
“I wish he’d turn the microphone off!”
At the Royal Variety Performance in 2001, watching Elton John
“You have mosquitos. I have the Press.”
To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean, 2003
“Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve been doing for years.”