Quotes from Big Phil

[Rab]

Thought this deserved a thread of its own. Feel free to add

• During a state visit to China in 1986, he famously told a group of British students: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".
  
• He also asked a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
  
• "British women can't cook." (1966)
  
• "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (during the 1981 recession)
  
• "We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking 'Are you all right? Are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?' You just got on with it." (commenting in 1995 on modern stress counselling for servicemen)
  
• "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)
  
• "Bloody silly fool!" (in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognise him)
  
• "It looks as if it was put in by an Indian." (in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh)
  
• "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band)
  
• "They must be out of their minds." (in 1982, in the Solomon Islands, after being told that the annual population growth was only 5%
  
• "You are a woman, aren't you?" (in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift)
  
• "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award)
  
• "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." (in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)
  
• "You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." (in 1993, to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary)
  
• "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)
  
• "You managed not to get eaten, then?" (in 1998, to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea)
  
• "If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)
  
• "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle." - said to a man who lived in a road where 11 people had been killed by wreakage from the Pan Am jumbo jet, on visit to Lockerbie in 1993.
  
• "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" speaking to Susan Edwards, who is blind, wheelchair bound and has a guide dog.

[I P Knightley]

Funny how they all seem so much more recent.

 

I hadn't heard the last one before. Pure class!

 

Gawd bless 'im.

 

I might swing by the Edward VII hospital on my way home in order to mount a vigil. I'll get "Big Phil" written across my forehead first.

[Dirk Diggler]

"Are you still throwing spears at other tribes?" (to Ivan Brim, Djabugay Elder at Tjapukai Aboriginal Park, Australia 2002)

[Dirk Diggler]

"How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test?" (Asking a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland)

[Pete Seeger]

The one about Dunblane gives me the boak, it was pretty insensitive. Old fud

[stevie]

met him whilst at school,he thought my painting was brilliant,it wasnt,old fool.

[Chrambo]

Who is this?

[Say What Again]

Who is this?

 

There's only 1 'Big Phil'

 

[Rab]

Who is this?

 

[Boris]

 

"Wahey, there goes my colon!"

[Feeno]

I remember one of a school visit by Heir Phil where upon he asked a very portly little chap what he wanted to do when he grew up.

 

"An Astronaut" the little chubber replied. "Well you better lose some weight then" Came Phils reply.

 

The man is a comedic genius!

[felix]

Met Phil at the opening of a swing park in Porty many years ago.

Never forget his comforting words to a young nervous Das... :-

 

"Auch zum Z?gern muss man sich entschlie?en."

 

Made me feel much better.

[Rab87]

Met Phil at the opening of a swing park in Porty many years ago.

Never forget his comforting words to a young nervous Das... :-

 

"Auch zum Z?gern muss man sich entschlie?en."

 

Made me feel much better.

 

Also for hesitation, one must decide????

[felix]

Also for hesitation, one must decide????

 

"Even hesitating requires one to make a decision".....

 

Didn't know what it meant at the time, but got my bloody arse up the chute before you could say:- Prince Christophe of Hess is your brother-in-law.

[kjc2006]

If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)

[AlanB]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAGOIGVC_VU

[Maximus]

"Even hesitating requires one to make a decision".....

 

Didn't know what it meant at the time, but he got me up my bloody arse chute before you could say:- Prince Christophe of Hess is your brother-in-law.