Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

“Do you still throw spears at each other?”

“It's a vast waste of space.”

“It is with my humble duty to announce that I have retired from the business of opening plaques.”

“When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.”

“Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practised for a good many years.”

“I declare this thing open, whatever it is.”

“If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.”

“Everybody was shouting a piratical 'yarr' at the end of their sentences. It was a bloody nightmare.”

“You managed not to get eaten, then?”

“How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”

“I'm just a bloody amoeba.”

“Tolerance is the one essential ingredient... You can take it from me that the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.”

“What do you gargle with, pebbles?”

“I would like to go to Russia very much - although the bastards murdered half my family.”

“The Philippines must be half empty as you're all here running the NHS.”

“People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.”

“Young people are the same all over the world. They are impossibly optimistic, believe they are immortal and are never deterred by failure.”

“Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”

“You're too fat to be an astronaut.”

“If it has four legs and it is not a chair, if it has two wings and flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”