Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Controversial remarks

The Duke is particularly known in Britain for occasional controversial remarks made while on public visits. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/416992.stm.

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• When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".
• After accepting a gift from a Kenyan native he replied, "You are a woman, aren't you?"
• "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)
• "British women can't cook." (1966)
• To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
• Asked a Scottish driving instructor, "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough for them to pass the driving test?"
• On a visit to the new Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, "Deaf? No wonder you are deaf standing so close to that racket."http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/354666.stm
• He asked an Australian aborigine, "Still throwing spears?" (2002)
• Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)
• To the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional Muslim robes, "You look like you're ready for bed!"

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• Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory, HRH remarked that it looked "like it was put in by an Indian".http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/416297.stm
• When a twelve-year-old boy told the Prince that he aspired to be an astronaut, His Highness responded, "You're too fat."
• On the Royal Navy ship HMS Boxer, when given a tour of the ship, which was quite extended, was quoted to have said, "Not another fucking chamber"
• On a visit to Exeter Cathedral, he asked a blind woman with a guide dog, "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"
• In 1983, after meeting then-San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein and several female supervisors, he remarked, "Aren't there any male officials?... This is a nanny city."