Grandson of Sir Winston Churchill Sir Nicholas Soames Speaks to G&T on Prince Philip

Former Conservative MP and friend of Prince Charles Sir Nicholas Soames told Times Radio that Prince Philip thought that politicians were “a shower.”

Speaking to Tom Newton Dunn and Gloria de Piero on G&T on Sunday he said:

Tom Newton Dunn: “Do you think he liked politicians because he’s been pretty critical of some in the past?”

Nicholas Soames: “No I don’t think he liked them at all, I think he thought we were a shower frankly.”

…

Tom Newton Dunn: “But why did he tell you at times that he thought you lot were a shower?”

Nicholas Soames: “He didn’t but I could tell he thought we were a shower.

….

I think our public life has in many ways, lost much of its sense of proportion. So the smallest thing is blown up to be a great issue, and you know there's never much peace. There's never much time for people just sit down and think, and I think that what Prince Philip would have thought, and he did have the time to do this, was that perhaps we didn't put the necessary amount of thought into the basics of how we dealt with all these things.”

He also said that Prince Philip’s jokes were “about trying to put people at ease.”

“He was someone who wanted to put people at ease and realised that in the presence of a member of the Royal Family, particularly someone like Prince Philip or the Queen, people became absolutely paralysed and didn’t know what to say or do.

He always used to pick out someone who looked likely to find it more difficult than anyone else. And actually what he was trying to do was to make a conversation and ease the moment and to bring them into feeling that this was not an awe-inspiring occasion but something where he had come to meet people and to learn from them, and to listen to them.

So whilst I absolutely understand the joy of the press in the so-called gaffes, there weren't many of them, [and they were] for a purpose. Some of them went a bit off-piste, but my God whose doesn’t.”