Another name with whom Prince Philip was romantically linked is Hélène Cordet, formerly Hélène Foufounis. She became friends with him when she was six and he was three and they spent holidays together at her parents’ villa in Le Touquet. Hélène became well known on television as the hostess of the BBC variety show Café Continental and as founder of The Saddle Room, London’s first discotheque. Hélène had two children while separated from her first husband, but declined at the time to name the father. When Philip elected to become godfather to both children, some assumed that he must be their father. Matters weren’t resolved when she allowed the paternity of her children to remain a mystery. Even in her memoir, Born Bewildered, published in 1961, years later, she does not name the father. Many years later, her son Max, who became a professor of economics, was finally provoked into issuing a public statement utterly denying this.

Over the years, the rumour mill produced several other names of those they claimed he’d had an affair with, including the Countess of Westmorland, the wife of the Queen’s Master of the Horse; the novelist Daphne du Maurier, wife of the Comptroller of the Royal Household ‘Boy’ Browning; the actresses Merle Oberon and Anna Massey; the TV personality Katie Boyle; the Duchess of York’s mother, Susan Barrantes; the Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the Lord Steward of the Royal Household; Philip’s cousin, Princess Alexandra; and his carriage-driving companion, Lady Romsey.

The satirical magazine Private Eye even linked Prince Philip with Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo affair which rocked the Conservative government in 1963. Ward, a fellow member of the Thursday Club, was notorious for throwing wild parties at which ‘The Man in the Mask’ served drinks wearing only a skimpy apron. Private Eye took to referring to Prince Philip as ‘The Naked Waiter’, but in the investigation by Lord Justice Denning into the Profumo affair he described Ward as an unreliable witness.

Of all Prince Philip’s respected biographers, only Sarah Bradford is adamant that Philip has had affairs. ‘There is no doubt in my mind at all,’ she told Gyles Brandreth. ‘The Duke of Edinburgh has had affairs – yes, full-blown affairs and more than one. Not with Pat Kirkwood or Merle Oberon or any of those people. You’re quite right, all that was nonsense, complete nonsense. I don’t think there was ever anything in any of that. But he has affairs. And the Queen accepts it. I think she thinks that’s how men are. He’s never been one for chasing actresses. His interest is quite different. The women he goes for are always younger than him, usually beautiful and highly aristocratic . . . Philip and Sacha Abercorn certainly had an affair. Without a doubt.’ Sacha Abercorn denied that they did.