The Duke of Edinburgh speaks to participants of a pilates class during a visit to Chadwell Heath Community Centre. Photo / Getty Images
The Duke of Edinburgh speaks to participants of a pilates class during a visit to Chadwell Heath Community Centre. Photo / Getty Images
The Duke of Edinburgh was as incorrigible as ever when he met a group of female community workers and asked them: "Who do you sponge off?"
Moments later he asked a professional fundraiser: "Do you have any friends left?"
His comments came just days after he was caught on cameratelling a photographer to "just take the f***ing picture" and are just the latest in a lifetime of gaffes.
The 94-year-old Duke was visiting Chadwell Heath Community Centre with the Queen on a visit to the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham when he met members of the Chadwell Heath Asian Women's Network.
Nusrat Zamir, who founded the organisation, said: "The Duke said to us 'Who do you sponge off?' We're all married so it's our husbands. "He was just teasing and it's similar to what I call my husband - the wallet."
The trustee, 35, who presented the Queen with a large iced sponge cake, added: "He also said to us 'Do you meet to have a gossip?'
"It's a familiar question, a lot of people say what the Duke said but we do a lot of work. When we organised a fair in March that took a lot of organising and time."
The Queen and the Duke give a wave as they watch a demonstration of swimming activities by school children. Photo / Getty Images
The royal couple arrived at the community centre at 11am and were shown round by its chairman Ann Estlea, 55.
They met Martin Shaw from the fundraising company Midas, who said: "It was quite funny because when I told the Duke I was a professional fundraiser he said 'Do you have any friends left?'. "I said 'Not many' and he said 'I guess so'.
"I'm an adviser to charities. I've seen this grow from nothing to what is here today.
"It's wonderful for the centre that the Queen came to open it."
Ms Estlea said she was delighted the visit was so relaxed and described how she had a joke with Philip about her constant use of the word "community".
She said: "The Duke told me off for using the word 'community' so many times and I asked him what I was supposed to say.
"He just laughed at me. As they left and I was shaking their hands I told him I was going to find a thesaurus to find different words for community and he just laughed.
"It was all lovely. I'm really happy with how it went. It felt comfortable, it felt easy, it felt right.
The Queen and the Duke were in the area to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of Barking and Dagenham's creation as a London Borough. Later the Queen and the Duke visited Sydney Russell School in Dagenham, where the Queen chatted in French to 13-year-old Suvika Kumaravelu in a Year 8 language class.
The Duke of Edinburgh, however, admitted that his once-fluent German was now rather rusty.
He said: "I've just come back from Germany. But I spent my time not understanding anything."
He did understand one phrase used by a teacher at the school, who had been speaking in German and finished by saying: "OK?" The Duke replied: "I don't think OK is German."
