Because the rumours persisted until late in his life, when Prince Philip told Princess Diana that her wayward behaviour was destroying the essence of everything that he and the Queen had dedicated their life to preserving, and that her actions were also damaging her children’s inheritance, she decided that she was going to do her utmost to discover about his alleged affairs as a revenge for what she saw as his disloyalty. According to her, after much careful detective work, she came to believe he had illegitimate children, as the rumours suggested, and that they had been financially cared for in perpetuity, though their identity was never going to be allowed to come to light.

So prevalent did the stories become that he was even asked directly about them himself. When a female journalist quizzed him about the rumours of extra-marital infidelities, Philip said: ‘Have you ever stopped to think that for the past forty years I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?’

There is no doubt that Prince Philip enjoys the company of pretty women, preferably years younger than he is. I have seen him myself gliding around the dance floor at the Royal Yacht Squadron Ball during Cowes week with Penny Romsey. Neither of them gave a damn who saw them or what anyone might have said. Philip was with his yachting cronies and no one seemed to take any notice. Philip, an excellent dancer in the old-fashioned style, was completely in rhythm with the beautiful Penny Romsey as they moved around the floor.

He is undoubtedly close to Penny. In 1996, at the height of what was dubbed ‘the war of the Waleses’, a snooping radio ham Neville Hawkins taped a mobile phone call made by Philip to a ‘plummy voiced’ woman in which they discussed the bitter marriage battle between Charles and Diana, with Prince Philip likening it to a soap opera. It turned out to be Penny, but at one point she handed the phone to her husband, rather breaking any illusion of some clandestine contact between them. She is around at many Windsor weekends and often acts as the eyes and ears of both Prince Philip and the Queen as to what is going on in the outside world. Ever since 1975, when she was first introduced to Prince Charles, she has always been popular with the royal family. It was her lively mind, as well as her beauty, that turned this former meat trader’s daughter into a central figure at the heart of royal life.