‘Your country must be half empty\u201a you’re all here running the NHS!’ What Philip jokingly told Filipino nurse Philip was visiting Luton and Dunstable University Hospital\u201a Bedfordshire He made hospital worker from the Philippines laugh with his comment Hospital says: ‘Staff greatly enjoyed the opportunity to meet the Duke.’ You’d think Prince Philip would go easy on the politically incorrect jokes when opening a new cardiac centre. After all\u201a it was just over a year ago that the 91-year-old Royal had heart surgery after suffering chest pains. But the outspoken Prince proved he\u2019s incorrigible at Luton and Dunstable Hospital\u201a telling a Filipino nurse: \u2018The Philippines must be half-empty \u2013 you\u2019re all here running the NHS.\u2019 Royal quip: The Duke of Edinburgh told this Filipino nurse at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital her country must be ‘half empty’\u201a because so many of her compatriots have come to the UK to work for the NHS Are there any of you left? The 91-year-old joked with the Filipino nurse and her colleagues during a visit to Luton and Dunstable Hospital to open a new cardiac centre earlier today The Prince made his remark as he opened a \u00a35.5million facility on Tuesday. The nurse seemed to take his joke in good humour and laughed. The 91-year-old royal\u201a who calls himself ‘the world’s most experienced curtain puller’\u201a asked when the hospital would get a helipad to save him a journey by car. He had apparently been keen to visit after undergoing heart surgery himself just over a year ago. As he visited the new cardiac centre\u201a the Duke was presented with a gold plated coronary arterial stent – similar to the one used during his own surgery. \u2018Ah – a spare\u201a just in case!\u201a \u2019 the smiling Duke quipped\u201a before attempting to perform the procedure himself using the equipment on the new wing. Buckingham Palace said last night that it would not comment on a ‘private conversation’. Royal sources insisted\u201a however\u201a that the prince would never intend to cause offence and liked to make the odd joke ‘to put people at ease’. Happy greeting: Prince Philip shakes the hand of the Filipino nurse as he makes her giggle with his joke On good form: The Duke of Edinburgh was in a ‘jovial’ mood and joked about the hospital installing a helipad to save him the car journey Royal opening: The Duke of Edinburgh visited the hospital to unveil a \u00a35.5million cardiac centre ‘It was a very jovial visit\u201a with lots of laughing all round. The Duke was on very good form\u201a’ they said. The hospital spokesperson added: ‘Staff greatly enjoyed the opportunity to meet the Duke of Edinburgh. We regard all conversations he had with our staff and guests as private and therefore would not comment on them. ‘Luton is a very cosmopolitan town and the working staff at Luton and Dunstable Hospital reflects that.’ The Nursing and Midwifery Council called his facts into question\u201a saying 16\u201a184 of the 670\u201a000 nurses in the UK are from the Philippines \u2013 which has a population of 94.8million. Viewed by some as ‘refreshingly open’ but by others as somewhat politically incorrect\u201a Prince Philip has always possessed a propensity to shock. Last year the Duke followed tradition as he walked past a pretty young woman in red and exclaimed ‘I would get arrested if I unzipped that dress!\u2019 Prince Phillip and the Queen were on a Royal visit to Bromley\u201a Kent\u201a when he spotted 25-year-old Hannah Jackson\u201a turned to the policeman standing next to her and gestured towards her eye-catching zip-up dress. ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’: The Duke of Edinburgh talks to Aboriginal performers after watching a culture show at Tjapukai Aboriginal Culture Park\u201a Cairns\u201a Queensland\u201a Australia Gaffe-prone: The Queen with the Duke of Edinburgh on a visit to St Loye’s Foundation in Exeter in 2010. Former Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie (left) was asked by the Duke of Edinburgh if she wore tartan knickers at a papal reception in 2009. And the prince was in a spot of bother again in 2001 after telling a 13-year-old Andrew Adams (right) he would need to lose weight if he wanted to be an astronaut. In 1986 he told British students in Peking: ‘If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.’ Seven years later\u201a he told a Briton living in Hungary: ‘You can’t have been here long. You’ve not got a pot belly.’ His remarks apparently alluded to the Hungarians’ love of food and drink. Closer to home\u201a he caused a storm while touring a factory in Edinburgh in August 1999 when he remarked that a fuse box ‘looked as though it had been put in by an Indian’. Again in Scotland\u201a he outraged locals when he asked a driving instructor he met on a walkabout in Oban in 1995: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them past the test?’. His other foot-in-mouth remarks include telling a group of teenagers from the British Deaf Association in Cardiff who were standing near a loud Caribbean steel band: ‘If you’re near that music it’s no wonder you’re deaf.’ On February 11\u201a the Duke of Edinburgh attended Sunday morning church Service at Sandringham Church\u201a Norfolk\u201a and left this policeman chuckling with an off-the-cuff comment that was not reported Some of his off-the-cuff remarks have proved more amusing\u201a however. When asked if he knew the Scilly Isles\u201a off the coast of Cornwall\u201a he joked: ‘Yes\u201a my son owns them.’ And of his daughter\u201a Princess Anne\u201a he jested: ‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay\u201a she is not interested.’ Phil Dampier author of Prince Philip: Wise Words and Golden Gaffes said: ‘This is a classic Prince Philip comment. I have no doubt that he doesn’t mean to offend and the nurse took no offence. He makes these comments to break the ice and put people at ease. ‘That said\u201a there is no doubt that sometimes he does overstep the mark and people are genuinely taken aback or upset by his comments.’ Mr Dampier pointed out that when the prince asked an islander in the Cayman Islands during a 1994 visit: ‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’\u201a the man appeared to be genuinely offended. THE GAFFE-PRONE DUKE’S CHARACTERISTIC SENSE OF HUMOUR The Duke is well-known for his outspoken comments\u201a here are some of his most memorable: He told British students during a 1986 state visit to China: ‘If you stay here much longer\u201a you’ll all be slitty-eyed.’ He once told a group of deaf youngsters from the British Deaf Association in Cardiff: ‘Deaf? If you are near there\u201a no wonder you are deaf\u201a’ referring to a school’s Caribbean steel band. He told Susan Edwards\u201a who is blind\u201a uses a wheelchair and has a guide dog: ‘Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?’ He caused a storm while touring a factory in Edinburgh in August 1999 when he remarked that a fuse box ‘looked as though it had been put in by an Indian’. Again in Scotland\u201a he outraged locals when he asked a driving instructor he met on a walkabout in Oban in 1995: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them past the test?’. ‘I would like to go to Russia very much \u2014 although the bastards murdered half my family.’ In 1967\u201a when asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union. In 2002\u201a the Duke surprised a group of aborigines when he asked them: ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’ And of his daughter\u201a Princess Anne\u201a he jested: ‘If it doesn\u2019t fart or eat hay\u201a she is not interested.’ There’s a lot of your family in tonight.’ After noticing business leader Atul Patel’s name badge during a Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians in 2009. On a visit to Valentines Mansion in Redbridge\u201a North London\u201a last March he also asked a 60-year-old man how many people he had knocked over on his mobility scooter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘Your country must be half empty\u201a you’re all here running the NHS!’ What Philip jokingly told Filipino nurse Philip was visiting Luton and Dunstable University Hospital\u201a Bedfordshire He made hospital worker from the Philippines laugh with his comment Hospital says: ‘Staff greatly enjoyed the opportunity to meet the Duke.’ You’d think Prince Philip would go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/back-to-values.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}