To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”
At a wildlife conference in China in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”
To parents at a previously struggling Sheffield school, 2003: “Were you here in the bad old days? ... That’s why you can’t read and write then!”
Asking Cate Blanchett to fix his DVD player because she worked “in the film industry”, 2008: “There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you tell me where it goes?”
“People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” 2000.To a group of industrialists in 1961: “I’ve never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing.”
In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”
To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “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.”
