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Too soon?

by 83 Comments

What is black and white & eats like a horse?

A zebra.

What is black and white & really hungry?

Prince Phillips cat.

Too soon?

2

Comments

  2. Besides, he’s got a lacky to feed the mog. Best the lazy bastard never made his bed or made a cup of tea. The cat, that is. I would never be insensitive about such a kind and circumspect man.

    • I’m sure the people who knew and loved Philip have better (or at least different) things to do at the moment than potter around on the Afterword. And from what we know about him poor taste jokes directed at others were right up his street, so it’s what he would have wanted.

        • I agree with you @Ardnoth. But Gatz and Moose are also right.

          Say what you like about him, Phil had a waggish sense of humour, and a distance about the more ridiculous aspects of his role in life.

          I intend to pay my respects without being too po-faced.

          The Guardian mentioned that he was instrumental in 1956 in stopping the (ludicrous) tradition of debutantes being presented at Buck House.

          He was a loyal, supportive husband to Her Maj for 73 years..

          Perhaps the history books will be a little kinder than Fleet Street?

          • My grandfather served 74 years with my grandmother, which would have challenged the patience of any saint. And he did it without a footman. He lost the hearing in one ear in Egypt when one of Monty’s tank guns went off by mistake while he was removing sand from it.

            They didn’t cancel the Top Of The Pops repeats when he died.

    • Humour is one way to deal with the shock of grief. The massive sense of loss and the enormous range of emotions that comes on the death of a loved one is, I would suggest, not really deflected by a joke. It may even help to release tension for those affected, if said in good faith.

      That said, the death of a public, yet off limits figure like the Duke of Edinburgh is going to impinge on the UK (and to an extent global) news cycle for some time without there being a personal connection for most people. I suspect very few knew him or his family personally – and those that did are unlikely to spend any time on this site.

  9. @kaisfatdad

    Think Phil gave as good as he got when it came to journos.

    My favourite story about him concerns the time he arrived in Canada to be greeted by the usual pack of half-pissed hacks bayin out the same gormless questions he heard everywhere he went.

    “How was your flight?” Ylled one member of the press

    “Hev yew evah been on a plen?”, shot back our Phil.

    “Well it was exactly like thet.”

  10. I’ve just seen a photo of the prime minister’s announcement.

    Can I just say how sad it is to see how Covid has restricted access in the UK to scissors, combs and hair products.

    • Well now. The premise, or ‘conceit’ is that Prince Philip, and only he, fed his own cat. Now he’s dead, the cat is hungry. But in his dash to rehash an old ‘dead celeb’ trope for mildly trollish thrills, Jack forgot to allow time for the corpse to cool and the cat’s breakfast to go down. It’s funnier today than it was yesterday, but not much.

  13. I was talking to a colleague about him yesterday. We both have parents of a similar age to Phil and Her Maj. My mum wouldn’t hurt a fly but she was right in there with the “what colour will Archie be” questions. My colleague’s Dad says some pretty non PC stuff but is a church going bell ringer. My point? Yes Phil was “forthright, straight talking etc” but his generation born in the twenties were just different, the world was very different and they must find 2021 a strange place to be. I know my mum does. I really hope he’s judged on the good he did and the service given rather than some of his wholly inappropriate musings. An old man has died and his family is grieving. We’ve all been there. So bit of respect without being to po faced about it is probably about right…

  14. I think everyone’s had their Phil now. I nicked that. Quite good though.

    FWIW I think an extreme reaction in either direction is probably worthy of derision but that’s true of most things.

  16. I am hearing that all television schedules over there have been changed, newsreaders wearing black, sombre music on the radio, 8 days of mourning etc. a friend complained that BBC4 has been taken off the air. WTF! Sounds like the 1940s or something. What will happen when the Queen dies? In Canada it was mentioned in the news bulletins, a few tributes aired and then back to your usual programming.

    • A friend of mine used to be a studio engineer for BBC local radio and he posted that there is a “black book” in every studio which gives instructions in the event of a royal death. I assume there is a sliding scale of disruption depending on seniority.
      Her Maj dies: Newsreaders to wear black and cry while all stations show the same news programme.
      Prince Edward: A quick announcement after the skateboarding duck item on South Today.

    • It’s an odd situation. The BBC is behaving as if they’re the only show in town and, because it’s so easy to publicly criticise them using the various Internet channels they’re treading carefully. The thing is that, due to the various Internet channels, satellites etc, they’re not the only show in town. To my mind, the BBC blanket coverage is both pointless and insulting. It may well be a major news item but I would argue that it’s not even something most of us need to know. If I’m listening to a news bulletin on 6Music for example, and I want to know more, I know where to go for that, I don’t need my intelligence insulted by spoon feeding it to me. I imagine every time the Queen gets a cold, Netflix will get a few more subscribers just in case! Personally I think the BBC has got it wrong.

  17. I think a few off-colour gags in honour of the old goat are perfectly acceptable. As has been mentioned above, tact and diplomacy weren’t always his best friend. Plenty of examples of his “gaffes” have been circulating in recent days, but ICYMI, let’s have a few samples.

    “British women can’t cook”

    “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed” (during the 1981 recession).

    “You are a woman, aren’t you?” (in Kenya after accepting a small gift from a local woman).

    “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed” (to a group of British students during a royal visit to China).

    “You can’t have been here that long, you haven’t got pot belly” (to a Briton he met in Hungary).

    “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” (to a wealthy islander in the Cayman Islands).

    “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test” (to a Scottish driving instructor).

    “It looks as if it was put in by an Indian” (referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh).

    “Still throwing spears?” (question put to an Aboriginal Australian during a visit).

    “There’s a lot of your family in tonight” (after looking at the name badge of businessman Atul Patel at a Palace reception for British Indians).

    “The Philippines must be half-empty as you’re all here running the NHS” (on meeting a Filipino nurse at Luton and Dunstable Hospital).

  19. Remarkable anecdotes of his widespread and long active philandering (pardon the pun) on his many visits to Australia. It seems for a lot of the time he was left to his own devices. And his own devices were put to good use it seems.

        • That’s’ the narrative that Royalists are spinning to try and brush away the bits that are proving less than flattering on Brenda & Co, and knowing there’s more to come. Obviously the dialogue is fiction, and there’s a degree of dramatic license. For example – Churchill didn’t lose a personal secretary to a bus accident in the fog – but there was a fog, and the records show he was slow to respond. Did Philip think Charles was “weak”? Who knows? It’s as plausible as the devoted father and husband line that being pushed by the papers at them moment.

          The Tories have been triggered by the suggestion that Thatcher was one of the least popular PM’s at Buck Palace, fully aware that the treatment of Blair will most likely be kinder. But to the extent that any of the royal commentators know the truth, it seems accurate.

    • Talking of Prince Andrew interesting that the Duke first began a “friendship” with “Lilibut” when he was 18 apparently. She was 5 years younger than him …

  20. @fortuneight

    Blimey, even those well-known royalists at the Gruan are trying to spin the narrative that large tranches of The Crown are made up – as even series creator, Peter Morgan, cheerfully admits.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/the-crown-fake-history-news-tv-series-royal-family-artistic-licence

    Brenda’s dislike of Thatcher is well known.

    Why do you imagine the series treatment of Bliar is likely to be any kinder when it’s widely known she couldn’t stand “Call me Tony” either?

    Interestingly, Harold Wislon was apparently her favorite of the 14 (?) PMs she worked with

    • Blair will likely get credit for getting Brenda to see how “The Firm’s” response to Di’s death was being so badly received by her subjects. Won’t play well with the true blues.

      And as for Simon Jenkins – did a republican piss on his slippers?

      • Peter Morgan wrote The Queen, so it’s likely that the programme will follow the same narrative. I imagine. Michael Sheen and Helen McCrory will be shoo-ins to play the Blairs.

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