Prince? No, King of the one liners

Prince Philip managed to get in a few zingers here and there.

From the Independent 

“We don’t come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.” During a trip to Canada in 1976.

“I wish he’d turn the microphone off!” The Prince expresses his opinion of Elton John’s performance at the 73rd Royal Variety Show, 2001

“You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.” To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean in 1966.

More

h/t Cameron

15 Replies to “Prince? No, King of the one liners”

  1. If he had just lived a couple months longer, he would have received a letter from the Queen.

  2. Steyn speaks highly of him:

    https://www.steynonline.com/11206/duking-it-out

    “I’d assumed upon acceptance of my invitation that we guests would be there as unpaid jesters to amuse our Royal hosts. But, in fact, HRH was a quickwitted chap; we were hard put to keep up with him, and I would have to say he had the best lines of the night.

    One of my fellow diners, bemoaning the lack of agricultural workers in Britain, explained that his farm now brought in young Australians and South Africans, who were able to make ninety-to-a-hundred quid a day (about £60,000 a year) picking onions.

    “Crying all the way to the bank?” murmured the Duke, channeling Liberace.

    I thought that was a rather good line.”

  3. Those comments are the mark of a man that spoke his mind and knew the perpetually outraged could kiss his arse.
    Likely did the “pull my finger” joke on his grand children much to the chagrin of her majesty.

    1. I always thought he was Liz’s Spiro Agnew, saying what she agreed with but couldn’t be caught voicing.

  4. He had a sense of humour. That is verboten to the woke leftists. They would have us all as drones.

    1. He had the wrong sense of humour. SJW and wokies would prefer jokes along the lines of “Why did the capitalist cross the road? To exploit the poor and downtrodden.” (Yeah, a real knee-slapper, that one is, eh? What? You didn’t think it was funny? Well, mate, it’s re-education camp for you!)

  5. L – He could have made a living doing stand-up comedy. No worry about hecklers, though.
    “Mind your tongue, scallywag, the wife could order you sent to The Tower for a haircut. “

  6. “British women can’t cook” (in Britain in 1966).
    “What do you gargle with? Pebbles?” (speaking to singer Tom Jones after the 1969 Royal Variety Performance).
    “I declare this thing open, whatever it is.” (on a visit to Canada in 1969).
    “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).
    “It looks like a tart’s bedroom.” (on seeing plans for the Duke and Duchess of York’s house at Sunninghill Park in 1988).
    “Yak, yak, yak; come on get a move on.” (shouted from the deck of Britannia in Belize in 1994 to the Queen who was chatting to her hosts on the quayside).
    “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.” (about the Second World War commenting on modern stress counselling for servicemen in 1995).
    “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).
    “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 5 per cent).
    “You are a woman, aren’t you?”(In Kenya, in 1984, after accepting a small gift from a local woman).
    “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.” (perhaps his most notorious comment – to British students in China, during a 1986 state visit).
    “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?” (suggesting to a student in 1998 who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea that tribes there were still cannibals).
    In Germany, in 1997, he welcomed German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a trade fair as “Reichskanzler” – the last German leader who used the title was Adolf Hitler.
    “You’re too fat to be an astronaut.” (to 13-year-old Andrew Adams who told Philip he wanted to go into space. Salford, 2001).
    “I wish he’d turn the microphone off.” (muttered at the Royal Variety Performance as he watched Sir Elton John perform, 2001).
    “Do you still throw spears at each other?” (In Australia in 2002 talking to a successful aborigine entrepreneur).
    “You look like a suicide bomber.” (to a young female officer wearing a bullet-proof vest on Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, in 2002).
    “Do you know they’re now producing eating dogs for anorexics?” (to a blind woman outside Exeter Cathedral, 2002).
    “Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?” (to designer Stephen Judge about his tiny goatee beard in July 2009).
    “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.” (after looking at the name badge of businessman Atul Patel at a Palace reception for British Indians in October 2009).
    “Do you work in a strip club?” (to 24-year-old Barnstaple Sea Cadet Elizabeth Rendle when she told him she also worked in a nightclub in March 2010).
    “Do you have a pair of knickers made out of this?” (pointing to some tartan to Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie a papal reception in Edinburgh in September 2010).
    “Bits are beginning to drop off.” (on approaching his 90th birthday, 2011).
    “How many people have you knocked over this morning on that thing?” (meeting disabled David Miller who drives a mobility scooter at the Valentine Mansion in Redbridge in March 2012).
    “I would get arrested if I unzipped that dress.” (to 25-year-old council worker Hannah Jackson, who was wearing a dress with a zip running the length of its front, on a Jubilee visit to Bromley, Kent, in May 2012).
    “The Philippines must be half empty as you’re all here running the NHS.” (on meeting a Filipino nurse at a Luton hospital in February 2013).
    “Most stripping is done by hand.” (to 83-year-old Mars factory worker Audrey Cook when discussing how she used to strip or cut Mars Bars by hand in April 2013).
    “(Children) go to school because their parents don’t want them in the house.” (prompting giggles from Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban after campaigning for the right of girls to go to school without fear – October 2013).
    “Just take the f***ing picture.” (losing patience with an RAF photographer at events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain – July 2015).
    “You look starved.” (to a pensioner on a visit to the Charterhouse almshouse for elderly men – February 2017)
    “I’m just a bloody amoeba.” (on the Queen’s decision that their children should be called Windsor, not Mountbatten).
    “Gentlemen, I think it is time we pulled our fingers out.”(to the Industrial Co-Partnership Association on Britain’s inefficient industries in 1961).
    “Are you asking me if the Queen is going to die?” (on being questioned on when the Prince of Wales would succeed to the throne).
    “If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time while in captivity.” (On a gunman who tried to kidnap the Princess Royal in 1974).
    “I hope he breaks his bloody neck.” (when a photographer covering a royal visit to India fell out of a tree).
    “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she’s not interested.” (on the Princess Royal).
    “When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.” (on marriage).
    “It’s a pleasant change to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.” (to Alfredo Stroessner, the Paraguayan dictator).
    “Where did you get that hat?” (supposedly to the Queen at her Coronation).

    1. “I declare this thing open … whatever it is.”

      Ouch! Canadian infrastructure, eh? Soon to be eclipsed by America’s JoBama $3T “infrastructure”

  7. Missed on of the best lines:
    Immigration Officer as Her Majesty and HRH the Duke land in Australia: “Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence?”

    HRH : “I didn’t realize it was still a requirement.”

    That rejoinder was not scripted. I am sure he had no expectation that there would be ANY sort of Immigration clearance, or questions of any sort. Why would there be? So that was a sharp witted and perfectly snarky rejoinder.

  8. He’s now doing stand up at the great comedy club in the sky. And Don Rickles is in the audience taking notes.

  9. The more I read of him, the more I like him….. and the more I despise the self-righteous, critical twits who lack both humour and the understanding of context.

    He was his own man. In one of the highest profile roles in the world he refused to let it define him. Nor would he submit to people’s expectations, and I think all the better of him for that too.

    In some ways he represented the value of the no-elected monarchy. He treated people neither as voters who must be courted regardless of his private opinion, nor as enemies to be vilified because they voted for the other Party. They were simply people to be judged according to how he saw them.

    Good luck to him!

  10. The linked “Independent” article referred to the Prince Philip’s “90 Most Excruciating Gaffes.” I think that most of us now accept that what the press calls a “gaffe” is what journalist Michael Kinsley called “a politician [or in this case a public figure] accidentally telling the truth.” In the case of Prince Philip, it just wasn’t an accident.

  11. Prince Phillip ascends to Heaven where he runs in to Diana.
    He says, “My goodness, dear, don’t you look lovely with your halo.”
    “You old bastard,” she screams. “It’s a f#cking steering wheel!”

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