Yeah but to be frank, I'd rather give it to them rather than you mate. They behave rather less vulgar and are more deserving of respect.

Well, I didn't ask for it, Ian. Is this another of those "all anti-royalists must be dead jealous" posts? As for less vulgar, well here's a small selection of the oh-so-erudite Duke of Edinburgh's more choice offerings:

To female sea cadet: "Do you work in a strip club?"

To a tourist in Budapest in 1993: "You can't have been here long, you haven't got a pot belly."

To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: "You managed not to get eaten then?"

Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: "It looks as though it was put in by an Indian." He later backtracked: "I meant to say cowboys."

To a woman solicitor: "I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit."

To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: "If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don't travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly."

To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: "It's a pleasure to be in a country that isn't ruled by its people."

To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?"

To a fashion writer in 1993: "You're not wearing mink knickers,are you?"

To Susan Edwards and her guide dog in 2002: "They have eating dogs for the anorexic now."

To Aboriginal leader William Brin, Queensland, 2002: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"

To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: "And what exotic part of the world do you come from?"

To wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident, 2002: "Do people trip over you?"

"I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing."

To female Labour MPs in 2000: "So this is feminist corner then."

To newsreader Michael Buerk, when told he knew about the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Awards, 2004: "That's more than you know about anything else then."

To a British student in China, 1986: "If you stay here much longer, you'll go home with slitty eyes."

To journalist Caroline Wyatt, who asked if the Queen was enjoying a Paris trip, 2006: "Damn fool question!"

On smoke alarms to a woman who lost two sons in a fire, 1998: "They're a damn nuisance - I've got one in my bathroom and every time I run my bath the steam sets it off."

Ah yes, such a sensitive, witty and un-vulgar fellow!

If part of your family were involved in an acrimonious divorce then a horrific car accident followed by disgusting conspiracy theories, you might be somewhat disappointed to read some ignorant tosser using it as an example of why to hate them.

"Ignorant tosser?" Are you a member of the Teribus/Old Don/MtheGM school of debate, then? For "ignorant tosser," read "a chap who dares to disagree with me!" As for the acrimonious divorce, et al., Diana was a gullible, though not exactly innocent, victim of one of the most cynical, ruthless and manipulative families on the planet by a country mile. Begod, our future king was shagging his mistress just a few days before he married Diana! And I mean gullible. Starstruck would be a better word for it.



Not a word used in this thread by me, thank you.