Duke in fresh foot-in-mouth outbreak

Published on Friday 3 May 2002 01:00

THE Duke of Edinburgh, renowned for his insensitive remarks to members of the public, has put his foot in it again.

On the second day of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee tour, Prince Philip told a blind woman with a guide dog: "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"

Susan Edwards had been waiting with her dog in the crowd outside Exeter Cathedral when the Duke spotted her.

The Queen’s husband, famous for his gaffes, quips and forthright opinions, caused consternation earlier this year on a royal tour of Australia when he asked aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

The Duke caused more controversy in 1999 when, during a visit to the Racal-MESL factory in Newbridge, near Edinburgh, he pointed at an old-fashioned fusebox and said it looked as if it had been "put in by an Indian".

More eyebrows were raised after the Duke made comments in 1996 amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting. The Duke said: "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?"

In Australia, in 1998, the Duke suggested that tribes in Papua New Guinea were still cannibals. "You managed not to get eaten, then?" he told a student who trekked the Kokoda jungle trail.

In 1997 he called a Cambridge University car park attendant, who did not recognise him, a "bloody silly fool".

Most famously in China, during the 1986 state visit, he described Peking as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed."

Earlier in the day, at Taunton’s Vivary Park, the Queen, met the nurse who cared for her father after he was struck by lung cancer.

Doreen Hardman, who nursed George VI at Buckingham Palace from September to November 1951, told the Queen that the King was an easy patient. "It was such fun," said Mrs Hardman, who is 90 next week. The King constantly expressed his dislike for the post-war Labour government, she added.