Fact File
Who he is: Philip Mountbatten
Also known as: HRH, The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, KG, KT, OM, CBE, AC, QSO, Queen's Consort and First Gentleman of the Realm.
Also: Phil the Greek.
Three things he doesn't like: Reporters, Fergie, noise.
Why he's in the news: For the latest in a long line of gaffes, suggesting a crude fuse-box in an Edinburgh factory looked like it had been "put in by an Indian".
Sensitivity is not one of the Duke of Edinburgh's strong points, but no one could ever accuse him of being a bad marksman.
After a typically robust contribution to Britain's post-Dunblane handgun debate in 1996 - he claimed gun club members were no more dangerous than golfers or people with cricket bats - the London Times carried an assessment of his shooting prowess.
In the previous 30 years, the paper estimated, the prince had bagged a tiger, two crocodiles, 60 wild boar, an unspecified number of stags, rabbits and ducks, and upwards of 30,000 pheasants. Quite a collection by any standards.
And if the sensibilities of other nations were wildlife too, there would be no space left in his trophy room. At various times in the past two decades, he has implied that all Hungarians are pot-bellied, that all Scots are drunks, and that British students in Beijing risked becoming "slitty-eyed".
He bagged himself the Canadians on another occasion, remarking on a visit that he and the queen didn't go there "for our health" and could think of better things to do. And while he has managed to avoid publicly insulting Ireland over the years, he is known to take a dim view of the climate and to inquire joshingly of our London-based diplomats if they suffer from "mildew".
But his repertoire extends beyond mere racism. Last May, attending a noisy concert in Cardiff to mark the opening of the Welsh Assembly, he was approached by members of the local branch of the British Deaf Association. "Deaf?" he quipped, gesturing to the music. "If you're near there, no wonder you're deaf!"
This last episode, at least, was an example of his unique humour. But as often as not, and certainly in the case of his gun club comments, the supposed "gaffes" amount to nothing more than the prince speaking his mind.
He has a bit of a history with the deaf community - his own mother suffered from congenital deafness, but it doesn't seem to have helped relations - and he certainly had a history with Indians before this week's controversy. In October 1997 he and the queen left a trail of diplomatic wreckage when they visited India in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the country's independence.
The couple chose to visit the site of an infamous 1919 massacre, in which Gen Reginald Dyer ordered fire on unarmed men, women and children, killing a reported 2,000. Expectations of an apology were high. Instead, passing the monument to those who died, the prince was heard to comment that the tragedy had been "vastly exaggerated", and that he had learned the truth virtually from "the horse's mouth", Gen Dyer's son, a former military colleague. The annoyance to the locals was compounded by other slights during the visit, and the Guardian reported the trip under the heading "Diary of a Debacle".
IT'S ironic that the prince has earned himself accusations of racism since he has suffered from stereotyping himself. His nickname derives from the curious circumstances of his birth when, in the tangled web of European monarchy, his Danish father found himself crowned king of Greece.
Unfortunately, Greece holds the European record for deposing monarchs, and within 18 months of Philip's birth in 1921 the family had to flee, carrying the baby in an improvised orange box. Stateless until the king of Denmark gave him a passport, the boy was later taken under the wing of his wealthy uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who put him through naval college.
At the age of 24, he was a veteran of the second World War, emerging, in the words of one biography, "unusually, some might say excessively, tough-minded, forthright, competitive, opinionated. . . precisely the sort of character unlikely to succeed within the sedate and ceremonious royal family he was about to join".
When he married Britain's Princess Elizabeth in 1947 his southern-European origins were frowned upon as Greece was not considered an appropriate breeding ground for British royals. In fact, his credentials were impeccable: Danish and German by ancestry, he was even a distant cousin of his wife - Queen Victoria is great-great-grandmother to both.
He has had to compensate for his lack of power by using his position to influence things he feels passionate about - he was an environmentalist long before it was commonplace.
Functionless in public life, the duke ruled the roost at home. He ensured that his sons got the same naval college education he had and even though they all went on to disappoint him, their shortcomings were nothing to those of their wives.
As publicity surrounding the failing marriages of Charles and Andrew grew, Prince Philip reportedly told the Duchess of York to "shut up or get out" and ordered Charles to "bloody well take charge" with Princess Diana. Charles did stand up to him when he wanted Diana's funeral to be left to the Spencer family.
In the soul-searching that followed Diana's death, Philip rather forlornly joined the family's "charm offensive" to win back the hearts of the British public. Of his golden wedding speech, the Scotsman reported (with no apparent irony): "The Duke of Edinburgh continued the rehabilitation of the royal family yesterday, by taking the unusual step of paying a personal tribute to his children and the queen."
