Last week he met Shilpa Shetty, the gorgeous Bollywood actress and Celebrity Big Brother winner. Tomorrow he’s off to a decent dinner with a bunch of chums at the Army and Navy Club.

But yesterday was a lowish point in the hard-working and dutiful life of the Duke of Edinburgh. He unveiled a road sign.

It comes with the territory of being the monarch’s husband. No matter that you are 85 years old and that your only protection against the bitter winds knifing across Windsor Great Park is a knee-length trenchcoat. It’s got to be done, and there’s only one way to do it: quickly.

Still, it’s only a five-minute drive from your front door with the heater on in your chauffeur-driven Range Rover.

But it takes a steely mind to know that an underwhelming event has been in your diary for months, and that the Rotary Club of Windsor, who paid for the sign, will be pretty miffed if you turn over in bed and decide that a lie-in would be the better option. “It’s an honour to have him unveil the sign,” David Shaw, spokesman for the club, said yesterday, succinctly proving the point.

The Duke performed the duty with the utmost dispatch. Without saying a word he walked from his car to the cloaked sign, pulled off the shiny white cloth and returned to his vehicle. As he turned to the usual posse of photographers he looked bemused by the attention, and was back in his car a mere three minutes and thirty seconds after getting out of it.

Prince Philip has been connected with the Windsor Rotary Club, where he is now a senior honorary member, for 50 years. To celebrate its centenary in 2005, the club spent £9,000 putting up six cast iron signs welcoming visitors to the historic town on the main roads into Windsor .

Given the looming presence of the castle on the hill dominating the surrounding countryside, it could reasonably be assumed that visitors already knew where they were. And, given the Duke’s crowded schedule, the unveiling was two years late.

The Duke, among his titles and honorifics, is Ranger of Windsor Great Park, one of the few unprofitable holdings of the vast Crown Estate.

He has held the post since the Queen’s accession in 1952 and still takes his duties seriously.

When he met Shilpa last week, he eyed her up and down and warned her not to get her heel stuck in the grating that she was standing on.

Even if you are the Duke, and famous for it, you can’t have much banter with a road sign.

Veils of silence

– In 1960 Princess Margaret tried to unveil a statue to St Boniface in Crediton, Devon, but the drape refused to fall

– In the early 1980s Princess Michael of Kent, criticised for agreeing to open a Happy Eater restaurant, said she would “go anywhere for a hot meal”

– In 1994 the Queen was left facing rows of empty seats after Barbadian politicians boycotted her opening of a tourism training centre

Source: Times Archive

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