Strippers on Mars

The nonagenarian head of the worlds richest dysfunctional family was back to his devilish best as he joked with a factory worker about her talent for 'stripping'. 

Brenda's husband Phil the Greek proved he still has a certain something in his eye as he indulged in a string of double entendres with Audrey Cook, an octogenarian spring chicken young enough to be his daughter. Audrey has worked at the at the Mars factory in Slough for 69 years.

Mrs Cook explained that when she first joined as a 14-year-old girl in 1944 she was employed in the stripping department where the original Mars bars were cut by hand. The Duke of Edinburgh indulged in some typically risqué banter. 'Stripping department? That’s Mars bars?' Philip enquired. 'I thought it was something else!'

Undeterred the factory’s longest-serving staff member told him innocently: 'It was all done by hand then.' To which the nonagenarian replied: 'Well, most stripping is done by hand.' Fortunately he managed to spend the rest of the mornings visit engaged in slightly less risqué conversation.

Thank god there were not walking down the Snickers production line!

Phil the Greek is fond of bantering with well-wishers and last year got into a spot of bother when he spied upon pretty council worker Hannah Jackson, 25, on a Jubilee visit in Bromley in Kent. Phil turned to the policeman standing next to her and gestured towards her eye-catching red dress which had a zip running the length of its front. 'I would get arrested if I unzipped that dress!' he exclaimed. Phil's comments were greeted as yet another 'gaffe', for which the Phil has become notorious. 

Most recently, Phil hit the headlines when he told a Filipino nurse that her country must be 'half empty as you're all here running the NHS' while on a visit to a Luton hospital. Phil's greatest hits include asking an Oban driving instructor how he managed to keep locals off the booze long enough to pass the test, and telling the president of Nigeria that his traditional robes made him look ready for bed.

'Ah, so this is feminist corner then.' he said to a group of female Labour MPs at a Buckingham Palace drinks party in 2000. 'You have mosquitos. I have the Press.' to the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean. 'Do you still throw spears at each other?' To Aboriginal leader William Brin during a visit to the Aboriginal Cultural Park in Queensland, 2002.

'What do you gargle with — pebbles?' To Tom Jones, after the Royal Variety Performance, 1969. He later added: 'It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs.'

'You managed not to get eaten then?' To a British student who was trekking in Papua New Guinea, during an official visit in 1998. 'I would like to go to Russia very much — although the bastards murdered half my family.' When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union. In 1967. 'All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury.' Lamenting the rate of British tax in 1963.

'Ghastly.' Prince Philip’s opinion of Beijing, during a tour of China in 1986. 'People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.' In 2000. 'If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes.' To a British student on a visit to China in 1986. 'British women can’t cook.' Endearing himself to the Scottish Women’s Institute in 1961. 'You are a woman, aren't you?' To a Kenyan woman in 1984, after accepting a state gift.

'I wish he’d turn the microphone off!' During Elton John’s performance at the 73rd Royal Variety Show in 2001. '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.' To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002.

'You did not design your beard too well, did you? You really must try better with your beard.' To a young fashion designer at Buckingham Palace in 2009. 'It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons.' On seeing an exhibition of 'primitive' Ethiopian art in 1965.

He would make a wonderful patron for the gaffe prone Canals and Rivers Trust.

Later....