(10 of 10)
TV Star. Back in Britain, the Prince became a TV star overnight when the BBC asked him to drop by and give the kids a talk on the tour. Philip took a full 52 minutes telling about it (and thus set a new record for the longest ad lib broadcast ever made on the network). Skillfully cutting in films and slides on cue, the Prince rambled on about anything and everything. "I'm not surprised it was forbidden," he said, describing the horrid taste of a vegetable believed by those in the Seychelles Islands to be the original forbidden fruit of Eden. "They must have had a good stiff neck in the morning," he reflected on some New Guinea native dancers. And for one indifferent shot of a penguin rookery, he apologized: "I really had to include this because I think it's the only one of the lot that I took myself."
"Our Job." As Britain's busiest married careerists. Elizabeth and Philip are often forced to pursue their duties separately, but at the start of each busy day, the door between their adjoining bedrooms at the palace is invariably open to permit them to chat while dressing. Even on the most crowded days they try to keep the time between 5 and 6:30 each evening free for a family romp with seven-year-old Anne (and Prince Charles when he is not at school); the rare evenings they can spend alone together are frequently devoted to television and an exchange of mocking criticism when one or the other of them appears on the screen.
"It's our job," Philip has said, "to make this monarchy business work." Last week, as BOAC's U.S.-built DC; put down at Ottawa, Philip and Elizabeth stepped out to face still more newsreel and TV cameras with inquisitive eyes, still more thousands of eager and curious subjects. Standing at his wife's side, the Queen's husband was ready as ever for the job that is always with them—to bind together the people of not only a nation but an entire Commonwealth of Nations in an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect and affection.
To give him precedence next to the Queen, when he is with her. When he is not, he ranks merely as the Duke of Edinburgh, behind archbishops, all other members of the royal family, and all other Dukes of the Realm.