The Duke of Edinburgh’s friend Martin Palmer appeared on Good Morning Britain on Friday ahead of the funeral on Saturday, and spoke to hosts Charlotte Hawkins and Ben Shephard.
Martin, who worked with Prince Philip on conservation for more than 36 years, said: “Quite honestly, he was a great mate, and you can’t say that about many people, but I can say that about him.”
Charlotte asked: “And you liked to have debates with him, did you ever worry about crossing the line with such a senior royal, did you ever think, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say that?’
“Or was it never an issue?”
“No, that was never even an issue,” replied Martin.
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“The great thing about him was he loved a good debate, and we had been on Mount Athos in the 90s, this extraordinary peninsula in Northern Greece, inhabited entirely by Greek monasteries.
“And of course, he was brought up as Greek orthodox Christian, and he’d had a wonderful time there but we had to leave early in the morning, and he was never very good early in the morning, he could be quite grumpy.
“And we got on this ferry to take us to mainland Greece, and we had this stonking row about monasticism, because we had been with these monks and their wonderful simple life.
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“I said, ‘There you are it’s a wonderful example’, and he said, ‘It’s not an example, only a handful of monks do this, how is that going to save the planet?’
“I said, ‘Because it offers an alternative’, and he said, ‘But it’s not a real alternative is it?’
“I said, ‘Yes it is, and you being here has highlighted what an alternative it can be,’ so we had this weirdly big row, and everybody on the top desk of the boat disappeared.
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“At the end, we had been at it for about half an hour, and I said, ‘Right, enough, I am going to get you a cup of coffee’.
“I went downstairs and all our Greek colleagues were there, and they said, ‘Will he put you in the tower?” laughed Martin.
“I said no, if I haven’t argued with him he might have put me in the tower!” he added.
Ben said: “Yes, that’s the sort of thing he embraced, lovely to hear your memories of him.”
* Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV at 6am