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Prince Philip wisecracks about Patels'at Buckingham Palace reception |
Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip's wisecracks have landed him in hot water
again. According to The Sun, Prince Philip joked with British-Indian business
leader Atul Patel about his name during a reception at Buckingham Palace for visiting
Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil. As guests lined up to meet Prince Philip
and Queen Elizabeth, the 88-year-old royal greeted Atul Patel by saying: "There's
a lot of your family in tonight." The comment suggested that all Patels are related.
Atul Patel, 47, is chief executive of the LHA-Asra group, one of Britain's leading
housing associations. Patel s the second most popular name in India after Singh.
It is also Britain's 24th most common name, with an estimated 670,000 Patels living
here, the Sun reported. Graham Smith, spokesman for Republic, a campaign group,
criticised Prince Philip's remark. "Making a joke about people called Patel is
deeply embarrassing given the timing of the Indian state visit. A spokesperson
for Patel Monday night confirmed the exchange - but insisted he took it as a joke.
Royal author Phil Dampier, who co-wrote "Duke of Hazard, The Wit and Wisdom of
Prince Philip", Monday night said: "This is a vintage Prince Philip gaffe, but
I'm sure he didn't mean any offence. While touring a factory near Edinburgh in
2000, Prine Phillip said a fuse box "looked as though it had been put in by an
Indian". Buckingham Palace was forced to issue an apology. In Cardiff ten years
ago he stunned British Deaf Association kids - telling them as they stood beside
a Caribbean steel band: "If you're near that music it's no wonder you're deaf."
In 1986 he told a World Wildlife Fund meeting: "If it has got four legs and it
is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and
if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." In Kenya in
1984 the Prince accepted a figurine from a native woman before asking her: "You
are a woman, aren't you?" But perhaps his most famous gaffe came in 1986 when
he was introduced to a group of exchange students staying in the Chinese city
of Xian. As he chatted to the youngsters, Philip suggested that if they lived
in the country for a year they would "go native and come home slitty-eyed". |
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