Dame Shirley Bassey, Sir David Attenborough, Carol Vorderman and Professor Brian Cox were among those to pay tribute. Sir David shared his memories in a pre-recorded interview for ITV. He said: “I found him an admirable man. He was a man of action and with a distinguished record in the Navy. When he left it he said goodbye to that life of action and I think he missed it.
“He hated formality, he found it suffocating and he always did his best to try to break down formality by being jokey and colloquial. He was very pragmatic and he didn’t care about convention.”
Carol Vorderman, 60, tweeted: “I went for a private lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
“They were both in their 80s and Prince Philip and she were flirting with each other madly and laughing. Theirs was a love and a marriage of more than 73 years. Deepest condolences.”
Physicist Prof Cox, 53, tweeted: “I sat next to Prince Philip at a lunch a few years ago and we discussed cosmology and relativity for the whole lunch – I hardly ate anything! He was indeed fiercely intelligent, knowledgeable about the subject and endlessly curious.”
Dame Shirley, 84, tweeted: “He was an extremely kind and charming man with an exceptional dedication to Queen and Country.”
Matt Smith, who played the Duke in the first two series of The Crown, said: “Prince Philip was the man. And he knew it – 99 and out, but what an innings. And what style.
“Thank you for your service old chap – it won’t be the same without you.”
Actress and comedian Katy Brand, 41, said: “He had a proper twinkle in his eye. He had the air of a man who would know what to do in a bear attack.
“I can see why it worked, the two of them.”
