(Reuters) - Prince Andrew could lose his post as Britain’s roving trade ambassador because of his friendship with a convicted U.S. pedophile, newspapers reported on Monday.
This is the latest in a number of royal gaffes over the years. Here are some details:
* QUEEN’S HUSBAND, PRINCE PHILIP:
- On a trip to China in the 1980s, he warned British students: “You’ll get slitty eyes if you stay too long.”
- In 1993, Philip told a Briton he met in Hungary: “You can’t have been here that long -- you haven’t got a pot belly.”
- During a visit to Oban in Scotland in 1995 he asked a driving instructor: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the (driving) test?”
- In 1999, while on a tour of a company near Edinburgh, Scotland, he saw a poorly wired fuse box. “It looks as though it was put in by an Indian,” he said.
- In 2001, Philip told a 13-year-old boy whose ambition was to go into space that he was too fat to be an astronaut.
- While touring Australia in 2002, the prince asked an Aborigine whether they still threw spears at each other.
* HEIR-TO-THRONE PRINCE CHARLES:
- Amid a tabloid frenzy in 2003, the prince denied innuendo of an alleged sexual incident with a servant -- without either the papers or the prince saying what it was he was denying.
- A newspaper intercepted a phone call between Charles and his lover Camilla Parker Bowles in 1993 in which the prince said he wanted to be reincarnated as her tampon.
* QUEEN’S DAUGHTER, PRINCESS ANNE:
- Became the first British royal to be convicted of a criminal offence in 350 years in 2002 when she pleaded guilty for failing to stop one of her dogs biting two children.
- A grumpy Anne told a pensioner who waited outside church on Christmas Day in 2000 to give her a gift: “What a ridiculous thing to do.”
* SARAH FERGUSON, DUCHESS OF YORK:
- In 1992, photos of a topless Sarah Ferguson, ex-wife of Prince Andrew, showed her kissing and apparently having her toes sucked by her “financial adviser,” Texan John Bryan, in front of her two small daughters.
- In 2010 Ferguson said her self-hatred, mounting debts and “gross stupidity” led her to fall for a videotaped sting by a journalist in which she appeared to offer to sell access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew.
- Ferguson appeared to ask for and accept $40,000 in cash in exchange for access to the prince, although she said that Andrew himself would never accept payment for access.
- She asked for another 500,000 pounds ($735,000) in what she said in an interview was “a long shot” and an amount she pulled “out of the sky.”
- Ferguson apologized for her “serious lapse in judgment” in a statement after the sting video was posted on May 23, 2010.
* QUEEN’S YOUNGEST SON, PRINCE EDWARD:
- Edward was ridiculed by the media for organizing a royal version of slapstick game show “It’s a Knockout.”
- He angered his own family and broke media guidelines when his TV company filmed his nephew Prince William while at university in 2001.
* PRINCE HARRY:
- In 2002 he admitted dabbling in marijuana and under-age drinking. Two years later Harry got involved in a scuffle with a photographer after leaving a nightclub.
- Harry had a reputation as a party-goer and made headlines in 2005 when he wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party two weeks before Queen Elizabeth led Holocaust memorial ceremonies. He later said it had been a “very stupid thing” to do.
- Harry apologized in January 2009 after a newspaper website published video footage showing him calling an Asian army colleague a “Paki,” a derogatory term in British slang for a person of Pakistani origin, but said he had used the term without malice. The recording was originally made in 2006.
Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Michael Roddy
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