Prince Philip was a nightmare: writer admits when penning Duke's biography

Writer Gyles Brandreth recalled a tricky encounter he had with Prince Philip.

During the promotion of his new autobiography Odd Boy Out, he shared that the book was a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said: “Suddenly everything in my life was postponed. I was going on tour, about to go right around the country with a new show - put on ice.

“I thought ‘What am I going to do?’, and because I do something all the time I thought ‘I’ve got to do something!’

“The only thing I had been asked to do was an autobiography,” he revealed.

However, he went on to share that the idea of writing an autobiography was not something that the late Duke of Edinburgh encouraged.

“I had just completed a book about the Duke of Edinburgh which came out at the time he died, but this was before then.

“I had in my head him saying to me ‘Don’t talk about yourself. People aren’t interested',” the writer revealed.

He also shared how the encounter was “challenging” when he had to write a biography about the late prince.

He said: “I struggled because the first time I wrote about him was at his invitation, he needed a biography written for one of his charities.

"I tried to do it, but he was most uncooperative. It was pretty much a nightmare,” Gyles confessed.