‘Are you a woman?’ Prince Philip’s worst racist and sexist gaffes revisited

As the Duke of Edinburgh retires from public life, RT looks through a back catalogue of wince-inducing comments and diplomatic gaffes spanning decades.

The Duke’s colorful language has frequently seen him face accusations of racism.

On one occasion, he warned a British student he met in Hong Kong that if he stayed there too long, he’d go “slitty-eyed.”

He also once congratulated a young man who hiked across Papua New Guinea on not being eaten by the locals.

In 2002, he asked Australian aboriginals whether they still “chucked spears at each other.”

The Prince once asked Filipina nurses working for the National Health Service (NHS) if there was anyone left in their country, and told an Indian businessman with the surname ‘Patel’ at an official event at Buckingham Palace “there’s a lot of your family in tonight” in reference to the 400 Indian guests in attendance.

Some of the Prince’s comments on women have also attracted criticism.

While receiving a gift from a Kenyan woman in 1984, the Duke saw fit to ask: “You are a woman, aren’t you?”

He also told the Scottish Women’s Institute that “British women can’t cook” during a visit in 1961.

When told by a female Sea Cadet that she worked in a nightclub in 2009, the interested Duke asked: “Is it a strip club?”

Although he is the Duke of Edinburgh, Philip has ruffled a few Scottish feathers over the years. He once asked a Scottish driving instructor: “how do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?” during a 1995 visit.

Besides non-white people, women, and the Scots, other targets have included Welsh singer Tom Jones – who he suggested gargled with pebbles and sang terrible songs – and a koala in Australia, which he refused to pet because he feared it would give him a “ghastly disease.”