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1. If you are conscious of the journey you are taking, wherever you are it will help you know where you are going next.
2. Bob Hope said: ‘You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.’ And while this quote is generally amusing, it is even more amusing when you know he said that when he was old.
3. I made that great mistake of trying to be funny.
4. I have been an MP and government minister.
5. I’m happy inside my own skin.
6. We did marry in secret and it was several years before we even told our parents that we were married.
7. Once, during one of the jubilee tours, I was in the car immediately behind theirs and I watched Prince Philip telling the Queen a story. He kept her laughing for 20 minutes.
8. Life has not turned out as I hoped it would.
9. Prince Philip had formally ‘retired’ in the summer of 2017, a couple of months after his 96th birthday, because the Queen encouraged him to do so. She wanted to stop him ‘pushing himself all the time’. She had become anxious about him.
10. I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship with royalty by saying too much.
11. Whatever you wanted in entertainment, Des O’Connor could provide, so he was in a way the last of his kind.
12. Indeed, the Duke of Edinburgh’s disdain for his eldest son was all the more shocking because he made little or no attempt to hide it.
13. People confuse being full of words with being terribly intelligent and informed.
14. I know that the Duke of Edinburgh’s rule was, ‘Don’t talk about yourself, don’t give personal interviews.’ I know that, and I know he told his children that because he told me.
15. I have been a print journalist.
16. I did once talk non-stop for 12 and a half hours, but it was to raise money for a worthwhile charity. At least, that’s my excuse.
17. Private weddings are becoming something of a family tradition. My daughter Saethryd married her husband Jason at Marylebone Register Office in 2005 while my wife and I had a lunch at Pizza Express.
18. Prince Philip is conscious of his place in the heritage of the Royal Family.
19. I’ve learnt that you’ve got to accept the audience you’ve got.
20. And the purpose of small talk is not to be controversial, clever or even interesting. It’s simply to fill the silent void with a small gesture of common humanity. It’s a spoken smile, a verbal handshake.