I hadn’t expected to write another ‘Wish You Were Here’ so soon, but after seeing this today, I can hardly resist. By way of preamble, I have to admit that I’ve never understood the American obsession with the British monarchy. I’ve never really gotten why we’d want it, why we always make comparisons to American ‘royal families’, or why – as evidenced this spring – thousands of us flock to England, adorned head-to-toe in obscenely distasteful arrangements of the Union Jack, lining the streets to cheer like loons every time one of them gets married (Y'all do remember that we fought a war to get rid of the British royals, right...?). My otherwise fiercely Welsh wife gets is: she’s a big fan of the royal family. I don’t get it…at least not the way she does. She sees majesty; I see immodesty. She sees regal bloodlines, I see political circumstance. She sees timeless grandeur, I see opulent irrelevance. There is only one thing about the Royal Family upon which we can both agree: Prince Phillip is the fucking shizzle. He, singlehandedly, almost makes the otherwise nauseating sea of pretention somewhat bearable.
As he turns 90 this week, we’ve all been asked to remember him as the remarkable figurehead of State that he’s been for the last 64 years. Phillip is the UK’s George W. Bush, saying the oddest things at the worst moments to all the wrong kinds of people. The difference (besides Phillip not being allowed anywhere near a political decision), is that where Dubya may just ramble on about things making absolutely no sense whatsoever, Phillip’s remarks always make sense – they’re just plain wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they’re freakin hilarious. Here are just a few... to a British student studying in China, 1986: ‘If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes.’ To the British Women’s Institute in 1961: ‘British women can’t cook’. And, among my personal faves, to a Scottish driving instructor, 1995: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’
And, unlike in the States, where everyone tries equally hard either to deny, justify or villify GWB's inane ramblings, everyone here in the UK (including the Duke of Edinburgh himself) knows he's a sexist, racist, classist, beer-swigging, faux-pas making baffoon. YouTube is bursting with videos either of his real 'gaffes', or mock newsreels of things he probably would have said if he'd had the chance. Take this one, for isntance, from a popular news-based comedy show called 'Mock the Week':
Prince Phillip represents everything that I think is bad about a Royal Family. He’s obscenely wealthy purely by genetic happenstance (as opposed to merit), he’s completely out-of-touch with the subjects over whom he rules, he has absolutely no concept of appropriate social behaviour and is quite possibly the most politically incorrect person ever to have walked the earth. And he does it all knowing full well that he’s talking out of his ass, and that he’ll get away with it because he’s married to The Queen. He just doesn't give a shit. Because of all of that, he’s the most enjoyable Royal I can imagine. The Queen…? Who cares! God Save Prince Phillip, says I!
Read more of Prince Phillip's 'so awful they're funny' quotes here. Well worth a read, though be prepared to spit out your tea.
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