Philip’s gift of the gaff
Prince Philip, that prince among consorts, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, has been a source of endless joy and delight for harried press officers the world over.
Offering his opinion of Stoke-on-Trent to the city’s Labour MP, Joan Walley, in 1997, the prince searched deep within his lexicon before reaching for ‘ghastly’. But then he also found China’s capital Beijing to be ‘ghastly’ during his infamous tour in 1986.
In 1999, he asked what exotic part of the world convicted Tory peer, Lord Taylor of Warwick, whose parents are Jamaican came from. Lord Taylor replied: ‘Birmingham’.
Although deemed ‘gaffes’ by a censorious press, Diary would rather see them as direct and courageous expressions of sentiments more humble folk hold back from publicly declaring.
There follows Diary’s favourite example of bold and fearless interrogation, this time of a Scottish driving instructor in 1995: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?
