Dontopedalogy

I wouldn't describe myself as a Royalist. I wouldn't really describe myself as a Republican either. I'm happy enough with the idea of a head of state but if we were setting up the country tomorrow I don't think we have a monarchy but, given that we have one, I don't have any burning desire to change that. However, I do find the fawning that some have for the royals to be rather vomit inducing but I do have a favourite royal and he has just turned 90.

Prince Philip is a controversial character. A German aristocrat born into the Greek royal family, serving with the Royal Navy and married to the British Queen he certainly has the background but it is more for his so-called "gaffes" that he is known. Except I don't think they are gaffes so much as a very sharp sense of black humour. Sometimes he has been accused of racism, and I think that on occasion his comments have been less than well considered but, at his best, he is one of the world's natural comedians. Largely he is taking widely held stereotypes and standing them on their heads. Out of context they can sound a bit off-colour but he even created a word to describe it: dontopedalogy - The science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it. I suppose for the rest of us it's when we think "that sounded much better in my head." Anyway, here is a selection of his comments which I have gathered off the internet:

At the height of the recession in 1981 he said: Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.

Whilst a group of deaf people were standing near a band, he said to the musicians: Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.

He asked Tom Jones after the Royal Variety Performance: What do you gargle with, pebbles?

He said to a Lockerbie man who lived in a road where 11 people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet: People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle.

He said of Canada: We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.

And to a French Canadian: I can't understand a word they say. They slur all their words.

At a private lunch given 30 years ago he said he thought Adam Faith's singing was like bath water going down a plug hole.

In the Caribbean: You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.

About the Apollo missions: It seems to me that it's the best way of wasting money that I know of. I don't think investments on the moon pay a very high dividend.

To pupils wearing blood-red uniforms: It makes you all look like Dracula's daughters

To a woman in Kenya: You are a woman, aren't you?

To someone who suggested in 1967 that a trip to Russia might improve diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Soviets: The bastards murdered half my family.

To a British Student in Papua New Guinea: You managed not to get eaten then?

To an Aborigine businessman: Do you still throw spears at each other?

Also in Oz when asked to stroke a koala he said: No, I might get some ghastly disease.

To a man from the Cayman Islands: Aren't most of you descended from pirates?

To the chairman of Channel 4: So YOU'RE responsible for the kind of crap Channel 4 produces.

To a wannabe astronaut: Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut.

On the subject of air travel: If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.

To a designer with a goatee beard: Well, you didn't design your beard too well, did you? You really must try better with your beard.

... and my personal favourites:

To a Scottish driving instructor: How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test.

To a woman with a guide dog: Do you know they're now producing eating dogs for the anorexics?

To the multi-ethnic dance troupe Diversity: Are you all one family?

Oh well. Happy birthday!