Prince Philip had joined the Queen on a visit to Wyvern Barracks in Exeter on Thursday when he asked Elizabeth Rendle what she did for a living.

The 24-year-old, a member of the Barnstaple Sea Cadets, told him she worked in a nightclub.

Philip, 88, then asked if it was a strip club, before joking that it was "probably too cold for that anyway", she told The Sun.

Miss Rendle added: "We were all laughing and I didn't take any offence. I think he was just putting people at their ease."

The incident was the latest in a long line of Royal gaffes by the Duke.

He once told Paraguayan dictator General Stroessner: "It's a pleasure to be in a country that isn't ruled by its people."

He also dashed a 13-year-old boy's ambitions when he told him: "You're too fat to be an astronaut."

And he once told a group from the British Deaf Association who were standing near a band: "Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf."

In 2002, Philip asked an indigenous Australian: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"

The same year he asked a driving instructor in Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"

Back in 1986, he commented to a group of British students in China: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed."

The Royal visit to Exeter was part of celebrations to mark 150 years of the Sea Cadets movement.

The Queen was offered the chance to try her hand at rock climbing but declined, saying that she was wearing the wrong shoes.