Gaffe galore
By Anjali Majumdar

CELEBRITIES, from the Duke of Edinburgh to two best selling writers to the late wife of the head of a famous school in the East, have on occasion, been caught with their foot in their mouth.

Jilly Cooper — the inspiration for our very own Shobha De’s novels — tells of chatting animatedly to a dashing young American with iron-grey hair at a party given by lady Annabel Goldsmith, Imran Khan’s mother-in-law, in Paris. In her own words: "Only when I say that Clinton deliberately started the war in Kosovo to destabilise the euro, do his green eyes flicker". And no wonder: He happens to be the American Ambassador to France as she is told later.

That is why to circumvent similar gaffes, if a stranger starts to berate the Bengalis for being a lazy, good-for-nothing lot — my married name giving no indication of stormy weather ahead for the speaker — I do more than flicker my brown eyes: I tell them I am one of the bhadralog.

From Jilly to Lord Jeffrey Archer, whose books are presumably somewhat different to her raunchy ones. Brave man, the Lord, having previously told a packed audience of Hindu worshippers that he was delighted to see so many Muslims under one roof, he returned to the scene of his almighty gaffe a few days later. This time he made a brief speech in Gujarati during a break in the recitation of the Ramayan, a nine-day event at Wembley. As I said, brave man indeed.

Now the headmaster’s wife, who seeing a vaguely familiar face in the Planters’ Club, presumes him to be a parent of a boy in her care. After a long conversation — mostly one-sided as is the wont of heads of schools and their consorts — she idly asks if he knew Raja Banerjee of Makaibari Tea Estate. "Only slightly", he replies. "Oh, I know him very well", she says. "Raja Banerjee told us, in recounting the story later, that he did not reveal his identity — yes, it was indeed him.

Prince Philip must surely wish that he was as tactful as Raja Banerjee. His recent comment about a fuse box, ‘an unsophisticated fuse box’ he spied while going round a factory, presumably sophisticated, has been well reported: "It looks as if it was put in by an Indian".

Not so well known is this specimen of his at a festival in Cardiff. A steel band was playing Caribbean music. A group of youngsters, all of whom were hearing impaired, were pointed out to the duke. "Deaf? (Pointing to the gigantic loud-speakers) If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf".

I do not know if there was an apology from Buckingham Palace the next day; there was certainly an uproar from the British Deaf Association.