No matter how busy he was, Philip found time to have some fun at the Thursday Club, which had weekly meetings in a private room at Wheeler’s fish restaurant in Soho. The club had been started by ‘Baron’ Nahum, who was an official photographer at the royal wedding. On an average evening at the Thursday Club there would be ten or fifteen members present. In addition to Philip and Baron, the actors David Niven and James Robertson Justice, Peter Ustinov and John Betjeman, Cecil Beaton, David Milford Haven, Iain MacLeod (later Chancellor of the Exchequer) and some newspaper editors might be present, as well as the occasional roguish figure. Philip would always be accompanied by Mike Parker.

Princess Elizabeth referred to this motley crew as ‘Philip’s funny friends’. There were rumours of wild parties, even of orgies, but exactly what went on at the club has never been substantiated. ‘We’ve been given the reputation of being wild,’ said Parker, ‘but the truth is we enjoyed fun and going around with people who knew what was going on . . . the idea that it was a drunken orgy is absolute rubbish. People got very merry but never drunk. As far as being wild, not guilty. As far as hanging around women, not guilty.’

Eileen Parker, who thought Philip’s friends were ‘distinctly odd’, had known him for several years before he married the future Queen. From the very first, she said, ‘He was a real loner. He was very good looking; tall, with that blond hair and those piercing blue eyes. You would turn and say, “Who’s that?” “Oh, that’s Prince Philip of Greece, but he never has anything to do with anybody.” ’

Marriage had not mellowed him. He was a man of his time and background, just as his wife was a woman of hers. Very much a man’s man, he enjoyed drinking and jesting with his cronies and continued to keep to a bachelor routine. On one occasion, he and Parker were so late back to Clarence House that he found the gates locked and had to climb in over them. ‘Serves them both right,’ his wife commented drily.

Parker remembered those early years as ‘incredibly happy, just gorgeous’. He oversaw all the prince’s engagements and the pair picked up each other’s phrases, copied each other’s mannerisms and shared each other’s jokes. They became well known for their elaborate practical jokes, and on one occasion during an RAF manoeuvre at the palace, they telephoned the Air Ministry and played a tape of a Battle of Britain dogfight down the line then shouted: ‘Help! One of your pilots has gone berserk and he’s strafing the palace!’