"International diplomacy is not Prince Philip's strong suit....He gave another foot-in-mouth display when he asked a Tamil priest about any links to the militant fighters the Tamil Tigers, during a visit to a Hindu temple with the Queen on her Golden Jubilee tour.
Other eyebrow-raising pronouncements have included:
# Speaking to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, he asked: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?".
# Still throwing spears? (Question put to an Australian Aborigine during a visit in March 2002)
# "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (during the 1981 recession)
# "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)
# "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 failed to recognise him)
# "It looks as if it was put in by an Indian." (in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh)
# "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band)
# "They must be out of their minds." (in 1982, in the Solomon Islands, after being told that the annual population growth was only 5%)
# "You are a woman, aren't you?" (in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift)
# 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
# "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award)
# "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." (in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)
# "You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." (in 1993, to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary)
# "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)
# "You managed not to get eaten, then?" (in 1998, to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea)
# "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)
# In 1996 he caused an outcry among gun law reformers when he said: "There's no evidence that people who use weapons for sport are any more dangerous than people who use golf clubs or tennis rackets or cricket bats."
# The Prince angered local residents in Lockerbie when on a visit to the town in 1993, he said to a 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."
# During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Peking as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."
# He said of Canada: "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves."
# 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."
# In 1966 he provoked outrage by saying: "British women can't cook."
# Commenting on stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary on the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, he said: "It was part of the fortunes of war. 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."
# Personal remarks have annoyed singing stars. In 1969 The Duke said to Tom Jones after the Royal Variety Performance: "What do you gargle with, pebbles?".
# 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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1848553.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/416992.stm
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