Prince Philip has every right to drive at 97 – he didn't even do a runner, so what's the big deal?

This is the closest our Prince Consort has got to killing another human being since the Second World War

I suppose the first question that comes to mind about Prince Philip’s audition to be the new Top Gear Stig is: “What was he doing driving himself anyway?”

One of the many benefits of being one of them royals is that you get driven round everywhere. You can get as sloshed as you like in your bib ’n’ tucker entertaining the Portuguese President or the King of Thailand, and the chauffeurs will get you home just fine. Who needs Uber?

In fact, HRH is quite fond of heading out on his own. He owns, or owned, a dark green taxi cab, which he used to hop into when he wanted to get away from Buckingham Palace incognito, going, well, who knows where?

It was obviously a shrewd choice of vehicle. Not only did it get lost in with all the other taxis in the capital, but if someone did happen to get into it and ask to be taken to Waterloo, his reactionary personal opinions could be aired with all the authority of a proper cabby. Only the accent and the anecdotes about the Duke of Kent might give things away.

To his great credit, he also refused to do a runner after the accident, which would have been on the cards what with his new hip and everything.

His security detail would have seen to it that the Norfolk plods wouldn’t get anywhere near arresting him, and the whole affair would have been swept nicely under the Sandringham Axminster. Anyone who claimed otherwise would be dismissed as yet another conspiracy theorist, like the people who already believe Al Fayed was in a white Fiat Punto seen speeding away from last night's scene.

I shudder to think what they will make of it all on the island of Tanna in the south Pacific, where the old Adonis is literally worshipped as a God. They, like some tabloid readers, believe that he is a divine being, specifically the human form of a mountain spirit from their land that travelled far across the seas to marry a powerful woman.

As with our own belief in Jesus Christ, the Tannans believed that one day the mountain spirit would return, with his powerful woman, in a tangerine frock. And so he did, during the 1974 royal visit to the New Hebrides. News of this latest event, when it eventually reaches Tanna, will destroy their faith, because, after all, gods don’t pull out of junctions without looking.

Anyhow, this is the closest the Prince Consort has got to killing another human being since the Second World War, when he was a dashing naval officer commanding the curiously named HMS Whelp. He also did some time stoking the Empress of Russia, which is not a euphemism but a description of the more humble duties he had to carry out before he got a job following two paces behind the Queen for the rest of his natural.

I don’t care what they say about him (and neither does he), he has a perfect right to be driving at 97, or whatever age he gets to. Maybe he could celebrate his centenary by doing a ton up on the A47, his wife and her congratulatory telegram by his side. They say he was always a bit fast.