Prince Philip, who is married to the Queen of England, is a lot like Barbara Bush. They are both so out of touch with non-zillionares that they think of people as a kind of funny farm animal and blithely make fun of them to their faces.
Memorable quotes from Philip:
To a driving instructor in Scotland: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
To a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: “You look as if you’re ready for bed.”
On seeing a fuse box filled with wires, during a visit to an electronics company: “This looks like it was put in by an Indian.”
To a chubby 13-year-old boy at a space exploration exhibit, pointing to a space capsule: “You’ll have to lose weight if you want to go in that.”
To a smoke-detector activist who lost two of her children in a house fire: “My smoke alarm is a damn nuisance. Every time I run my bath, the steam sets it off and I’ve got firefighters at my door.”
To members of the British Deaf Association, while pointing to a loudspeaker playing Caribbean music: “No wonder you are deaf.”
To a tourist, during a state visit to Hungary: “You can’t have been here long, you’ve not potbelly.”
Speaking to British students studying in China: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
On the “key problem” facing Brazil: “Brazilians live there.”
On his daughter Princess Anne: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”
On seeing a picture once owned by England’s King Charles I in the Louvre in Paris: “So I said to the Queen, ‘Shall we take it back?’”