90 year old Prince Philip had emergency surgery after feeling pains in his chest. That is always a scary situation, let alone when you are 90. Doctors said the husband of the Queen had a blocked artery which they treated by scaring him with pictures of Verne Troyer sticking out his tongue and Michael Lohan working out naked. When that just left him blinded, but still with chest pains, they did one of those stent things. This morning, the Queen stopped by to visit and brought Philip some flowers and a comic book. Do you think she brought anything? Would she stop by the gift shop and get a balloon?
He made it through, he's a tough old bird....
ReplyDeleteI had never really heard of this guy before (not really into the British royals, I guess) but saw this link to his best gaffes and it gave me a couple of minutes of laughs - good, old-fashioned colonial racism at its best:
ReplyDelete3. "Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf." Said to a group of deaf children standing near a Caribbean steel drum band in 2000.
4. "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes." To 21-year-old British student Simon Kerby during a visit to China in 1986.
6. "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." To a British tourist during a tour of Budapest in Hungary. 1993.
7. "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Asked of a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.
22. "I would like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family." In 1967, asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ninety-gaffes-in-ninety-years-2290148.html
I'm sorry, just one more. Or two:
ReplyDelete53. "People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans." In 2000.
54. "Can you tell the difference between them?" On being told by President Obama that he'd had breakfast with the leaders of the UK, China and Russia.
78. "It looks like a tart's bedroom." On seeing plans for the Duke and then Duchess of York's house at Sunninghill Park.
From what my grandparents mentioned of him he was not really considered good enough for The Queen - on many levels I suspect. He sounds like a judgmental, boorish prick IMO.
ReplyDelete@linnea, some of those sound like intentional humor. The Brits are very dry and often inappropriate with their usually very funny humor. Of course, I'm sure some of them were colonial racism. Whatever, it's Christmas, so I'm in a generous mood.
ReplyDelete^linnea, LOL!!!!!! omg, thanks for sharing. fabulous.
ReplyDeleteHe's 90, the product of a bygone era, and the freaking Royal Consort.
ReplyDeletePlus, he has Camilla as a daughter-in-law.
He gets a lifetime pass.
ENT, what's she supposed to bring him? The deed to some real estate in Wales?
ReplyDeleteLinnea: You have to admit, he had a point w/#22--at that point, the murder of the Czar's family was only 50 years earlier, and thus in living memory. For the rest, I'll say 50/50 colonial racism/dry sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteHis marrying the Queen (still Princess Elizabeth at the time) was a tad problematic for several reasons. For one, in spite of allegedly being Greek royalty, he's actually 7/8 German w/a splash of Danish, which was a potential liability so soon after WWII.
(Practically speaking, though, the royal family was 100% German from George I through George VI, as they kept taking German wives because they were Protestant; the current queen is 1/2 English thanks to the Queen Mum, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who was the first native-born queen consort since Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's last queen. Prince Charles is just over 2/3 German thanks to hs dad, but William & Harry are only 1/3 German thanks to Diana's English blood, and any children of Will & Kate will be 5/6 English, or more English than any ruling monarch since Elizabeth I. Isn't history fascinating?)
(Cont.) Another big problem for Philip was his Nazi relatives--his sister Sophie's husband, Christopher of Hesse, was a high-ranking Nazi who joined the Luftwaffe & died in a plane crash, and another of his sisters was married to a German army officer. Needless to say, none of his sisters were invited to his wedding...And then there's the whole business of Philip having to give up his original name (Schelswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg) because it was too German, his uncle Dickie, Lord Mountbatten convincing him to take his name, and the pressure they put on the Queen to use his name instead of Windsor (she won that battle). The irony, of course, is that "Mountbatten" is an Anglicized version of the original family name of Battenburg that came about during WWI, and "Windsor" was more-or-less made up by George V due to the actual family name, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, being, well, too German...see what we're dealing with here? (Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw, while rather sloppy at times w/some of the dates & continuity, is a very entertaining book, and highly recommended for those who enjoy royal gossip. ;-)
ReplyDelete@ Linnea Those are hilarious! But like RJ was saying #22 is not really much of a gaffe since he was more directly related to Romanovs than Queen Elizabeth (they're both descended from Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert). I think that crack about whom dukes marry was probably a stab at Fergie, whom he reportedly did not like at all and it seems with her scandals with good reason, and a bit of a jab at his wife's uncle, the infamous Duke of Windsor.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Wikipedia has a bit about his remarks:
Over his sixty years as royal consort, Philip became famous for making remarks which some people regarded as offensive and/or based on stereotypes.[72][73] Some of them were immediately interpreted as gaffes; but other awkward observations were construed as merely odd, off-colour, and often funny.[74][75][76] In his own words, comments attributed to Prince Philip have contributed to the perception that he is "a cantankerous old sod".[77] The historian David Starkey has described him as a kind of " H.R.H Victor Meldrew".[78] For example, in May 1999 British newspapers accused Philip of insulting deaf children at a pop concert in Wales by saying, "No wonder you are deaf listening to this row."[79] Later Philip wrote, "the story is largely invention. It so happens that my mother was quite seriously deaf and I have been Patron of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf for ages, so it's hardly likely that I would do any such thing."[80] During a state visit to the People's Republic of China in 1986, in a private conversation with British students from Xian's North West University, Philip joked, "If you stay here much longer, you'll go slit-eyed."[81] The British press reported on the remark as indicative of racial intolerance, but the Chinese authorities were unconcerned. Chinese students studying in the UK, an official explained, were often told in jest not to stay away too long, lest they go "round-eyed".[82] His comment had no effect on Sino-British relations, but it shaped his own reputation.[83]
Thanks, Linnea! Those comments are hilarious.
ReplyDeleteThanks Robin! That is fascinating...
ReplyDeleteMy gram looked just like Queen E. She, too, was half German, half English.
Prince Philip is priceless, a real treasure.
ReplyDeleteI like that the Royals give out their presents on Christmas Eve and cheap joke gifts are the order of the day, nothing expensive or serious.
Philip is indeed a tough old bird, and still a good looking man, especially at his age. He was quite handsome in his younger years. Here's hoping he and the Queen have many more very healthy years together.
ReplyDeleteI may be a fool, but Elizabeth & Philip seem to be genuinely in love, from the start. So many years together, joined at the hip.
ReplyDeleteI've read rumors that he cheats, but I choose not to believe them. When you watch him with his wife at official functions, they are always whispering and commenting and smiling at one another. No one could fake interest for so long.
Thanks Robin! So, is Windor William's last name?
ReplyDeleteActually, figgy, I think he goes by William Wales--don't know why, since he's not the Prince of Wales, his dad is, but I suppose if you want to think of Wales as Charles' last name, then it might work. Technically, though, it probably should be Windsor...
ReplyDeleteHi, Robin. One small correction -- the Queen Mother wasn't English, nor English-born. She was from a very prominent Scottish family. So she was British, but not English.
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