i loved his "gaffes" that the UK press made much light of- here is a selection of the great man's wit and wisdom-
During a 1986 visit to China, he told a British student: “If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes.”
To a driving instructor in Scotland in 1995, he said: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
During a 2002 visit to Australia, he asked a group of Indigenous Australians: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
On a visit to north London, he asked a disabled man on a mobility scooter: “How many people have you knocked over this morning on that thing?”
”When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife”.
In 1984, while accepting a gift from a woman in Kenya: "You are a woman aren't you?"
In 1998, Prince Philip asked a student who returned from a trip to Papua New Guinea, "You managed not to get eaten then?"
"We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves." During a trip to Canada in 1976.
"If it has 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." Said to a World Wildlife Fund meeting in 1986.
"Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" To a wheelchair-bound Susan Edwards, and her guide dog Natalie in 2002.
"A pissometer?" The Prince sees the renames the piezometer water gauge demonstrated by Australian farmer Steve Filelti in 2000.
"The French don't know how to cook breakfast." The Prince said this after having a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy – in 2002.
"Do people trip over you?" Meeting a wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident in 2002.
"Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practiced for a good many years." Address to the General Dental Council, quoted in Time in 1960.
"I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff." Commiserating about the standard of Buckingham Palace cuisine in 1962.
"It is my invariable custom to say something flattering to begin with so that I shall be excused if by any chance I put my foot in it later on." Full marks for honesty, from a speech in 1956.