The fun thing about the Duke of Edinburgh was the fact that he came from the great tribe of the Perhapsburgs, Europe's peripatetic aristocracy: always hunting down a throne, marrying it's own money, declaring eternal loyalty to whichever perch on which it can feather a nest>

>until the gig goes sour, like it did with his dad, who had to lean on his connections to hustle up a British warship in anticipation of a Greek firing squad, before retiring to the casinos of Monte Carlo.>

>Young Phil knows he's on to a good thing here. The British monarchy is a top gig, stable, prestigious, well paid and the foreign travel is mainly voluntary. So Philip joins the Senior Service, talent spots a 13 year old queen to be and gets to work.>

>And who can blame him? It beats the hell out of sucking up to Hitler, riding glumly round Stockholm on a bike or keeping one step ahead of an assassination squad from VMRO>

>VMRO - the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation - once brought an entire cathedral down on top of the King of Bulgaria with a bomb. These were grim times for the hustling end of the Almanac de Gotha>

>Like the man himself said, he came from minor Balkan royalty of no particular importance. But he worked the angles, made the moves, and now A Nation Mourns A Paragon of Duty. Truly, the marks are cooled>

>so farewell then, one of the world's great hustlers. A man fit to mention in the same breath as Yellow Kid Weil and Bathhouse John Coughlin. He played the big casino and scooped the lot.

ends