A Greek who put the Great into GB, RIP

A Greek prince with no Greek blood at all.

We should commemorate the big man with a few of his most famous quotes.

“Do you still throw spears at each other?”
A question to an Indigenous elder during a Royal visit to Australia in 2002.

“If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
To a British exchange student studying in China.

“It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.”
Commenting on a dodgy fuse box at a factory in Scotland.

“I meant to say cowboys. I just got my cowboys and Indians mixed up.”
Clarifying his earlier remarks about the fuse box.

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

“You look as if you’re ready for the bed.”
Appraisal of the ceremonial robes the Nigerian secretary-general of the Commonwealth was wearing at a state dinner.

“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.”
Advice to a meeting of the World Wildlife Fund in 1986.

“Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.”
In 1999 to deaf people in Wales about a steel band.

“Well, you’ll never fly in it; you’re too fat to be an astronaut.”
Speaking to a 13-year-old while about the NOVA space craft on a 2001 visit to a Manchester university

“Do you know they have eating-dogs for the anorexic now?”
In 2002 to a blind woman and her guide dog.

“Do you work in a strip club?”
To Navy trainer Elizabeth Rendle.

“If you travel as much as we do you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”
Discussing the evolution of air travel with the Aircraft Research Association.

“Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”
About the Thatcher era recession in Britain.

Some absolute zingers in there.

Gone too soon

Humour has not been banned. Casual morony has. Context is, as always, everything. Some of those are pretty amusing in the cringey grandad 'oh he's from a different era. He doesn't really mean it' sort of way.

Perfectly fine for a private audience or bar chat but not, perhaps, for a public audience as a proxy head of state.

Y'know, sure, he lived a life yada yada yada but there are plenty of other equals (or betters) to him that will have zero public recognition coupled with royalist propaganda fawning to recognise and inflate their achievements.

I have no issue with celebrating his role, and his life, but the hyperbole and overdross that comes with this sort of thing for someone of actual signficance is bad enough. So for it to start off in the same vein for a peripheral cog is a bit strong.

“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.”