Philip - Prince of gaffes

The Duke of Edinburgh has a reputation for plain speaking. Other thoughts of Prince Philip have included:

"British women can't cook" - a 1966 pronouncement.

"What do you gargle with, pebbles?" - speaking to singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance.

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed" - during the 1981 recession.

"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" - at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting.

"We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking 'Are you all right? Are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?' You just got on with it" - commenting in 1995 on modern stress counselling for servicemen.

"How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?" - to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, during a 1995 walkabout.

"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?" - in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting.

"Bloody silly fool!" - in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who did not recognise him.

"It looks as if it was put in by an Indian" - pointing at an old-fashioned fusebox in a factory near Edinburgh in 1999.

"If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed" - to British students in China, during the 1986 state visit.

"Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf" - to young deaf people in Cardiff, in 1999, referring to a school's steel band.

"They must be out of their minds" - in the Solomon Islands, in 1982, when he was told that the annual population growth was only 5%.

"You are a woman, aren't you?" - in Kenya, in 1984, after accepting a small gift from a native woman.

"Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world" - in Thailand, in 1991, after accepting a conservation award.

"Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease" - in Australia, in 1992, when asked to stroke a Koala bear.

"You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly" - to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, in 1993.

"Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" - to a wealthy islander in the Cayman Islands in 1994.

"You managed not to get eaten, then?" - to a student in 1998 who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea.