May 3, 2002

10:32 PM

Prince Phillip is great with the public.Firstly he tells British students in China that "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.", then he suggests that Papua New Guineans are cannibals. Now he tells us that "they have eating dogs for the anorexic now". Pure champagne comedy.
posted by helloboys (19 comments total)

I bet the PC-crowd is having some very serious discussions over a few bad jokes. What standard do you apply to him? If Don Rickles said this we would be choking on the guffaws. I think the only people who can complain about Phillip are the targets of his jokes. Some people don't mind a laugh at their expense, others do.

Personally, I think he gets off on having every one of his bad jokes turn into world-wide headlines. Perhaps we've all decided that public figures can't be tasteless in any way and we're truly shocked when we find out that they're just as faulty, stupid, silly, and ignorant as the rest of us.

Don't get me wrong, if the blind lady or the student asked for an apology I would expect Phillip to deliver one, but I think the guy is using his humor for fun and not specifically to insult or hurt anyone.
posted by skallas at 10:53 PM on May 3, 2002

"the guy" is ROYALTY, skallas - I think the whole point is to hold him to a higher standard than the rest of us.
posted by scarabic at 11:18 PM on May 3, 2002

If Don Rickles said this we would be choking on the guffaws.

"Jokes" about cannibals and "slitty-eyed" Chinese people? Yeah, racial humor's a laff riot, all right. What a fool (the prince, I mean). I sometimes chuckle when I read stories like this, but I'm laughing *at* the prince for being such a goofball, not *with* him. It also makes me a bit giddy that he doesn't represent my country (yeah, I know, we have Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, but I digress).

The eating dog thing didn't bother me so much, though. I don't know why, it seemed stupid but not offensive.
posted by diddlegnome at 11:24 PM on May 3, 2002

champagne comedy - u listen to Xfm?
posted by monkeyJuice at 1:26 AM on May 4, 2002

Earlier this year, he asked Australian Aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

I, for one, think this is hysterical. He has a great sense of humor.
posted by mikegre at 5:43 AM on May 4, 2002

If I were him, I would say and do whatever the fuck I like. What, is ERII going to divorce him? Fire him?

After all, you're only the royal consort, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich; Knight of the Garter; Admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps, Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Cadet Force and Air Commodore-in-Chief of the Air Training Corps; Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Captain-General of the Royal Marines and Colonel-in-Chief, or Colonel, of a number of British and overseas regiments; Patron or President of some 800 organisations; Patron of the Industrial Society; President of World Wildlife Fund - UK (WWF) from its formation in 1961 to 1982, and International President of WWF (later the World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1981 to 1996; President of the International Equestrian Federation from 1964 to 1986; President of Central Council of Physical Recreation (CCPR); Admiral of the Royal Yacht Squadron; former President of the Marylebone Cricket Club; Grand Master of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators of the British Empire; Master of Trinity House; Chairman of Trustees of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme; Knight of the Thistle; Chancellor of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh; former Chancellor of the Universities of Wales and Salford; and life Governor of King's College in the University of London once, you know, and then you die.

Let the PR twits sort it out. And it looks as if that, to one degree or another, is his attitude.
posted by pracowity at 7:04 AM on May 4, 2002

After all, you're only the royal consort . . .

Hey, hard work pays off.
posted by yerfatma at 7:56 AM on May 4, 2002

I'd be concerned he's getting old. Is the royal family training a suitable replacement?
posted by dhartung at 8:24 AM on May 4, 2002

"Youre all a bunch of bastards."
posted by lotsofno at 9:32 AM on May 4, 2002

Ha! "Eating dogs for the anorexic." Come on, that's pretty funny. The other ones, not so much. But that right there is comedy gold.
posted by rusty at 9:43 AM on May 4, 2002

Eddie Izzard on Prince Philip.
posted by tpoh.org at 12:06 PM on May 4, 2002

I didnt get the "eating dogs" at first. I think I had the rhythm wrong. But when I finally got it, I nearly spilt my coffee. I think he is funny and volunteer to be around him all day. I think he'd be most people's favorite uncle.
posted by sadie01221975 at 2:54 PM on May 4, 2002

Here are a few more of Prince Philip's attempts at humor, of varying quality.

I was amused by: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (during the 1981 recession)
posted by epimorph at 4:14 PM on May 4, 2002

He's Greek, not British.
posted by selton at 4:40 PM on May 4, 2002

Isn't he a Danish Greek really?

And yes the fact that he's the life president of my college makes me insanely happy with mad joy.
posted by nedrichards at 5:08 PM on May 4, 2002

He is generally quite funny, but in one of his gaffes he made a good point:

--
[..] he compared a cricket bat to a gun amid calls to ban firearms after the 1996 shooting of 16 children at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland.

"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?" he asked.
--

Darn right, Phil!
posted by wackybrit at 5:10 PM on May 4, 2002

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."

OK, that one made me laugh.
posted by diddlegnome at 5:52 PM on May 4, 2002

Number of people cricket-batted to death, wackybrit? I'm guessing you have the figures at hand.

Anyway, Phil's tolerable, because he has no real power: and scarabic, actually, the Brits tend to hold royals to a lower standard, because all that inbreeding, combined with a pretty silly and archaic upbringing, has got to be a handicap. (Then again, who in Britain doesn't have an old relative who comes up with uneasy comic gems?) At least he's parsable when he says daft things, unlike certain scions of ruling families. And yeah, he keeps the tabs in headlines. Finally, 'eating dogs for the anorexic' is a line that hundreds of stand-up comics would have killed for. As rusty said, total fucking comedy gold.
posted by riviera at 6:27 PM on May 4, 2002

Here are a few more of Prince Philip's attempts at humor

Silly American me... That should have been humour. :)
posted by epimorph at 6:40 PM on May 4, 2002