What chance did he have? With a very short tunic and those royal pins in view, how Princess Elizabeth’s starring role as pantomime Aladdin filled Philip with something more than just Christmas cheer…

The latest episodes of The Crown show the moment 19-year-old Prince William fell in love with Catherine Middleton at St Andrews University.

Unforgettable, she walked the catwalk during a dazzling fashion show for charity. The wide-eyed prince declared, “Wow! Kate is hot’.

Eighty years ago this Christmas, by a strange coincidence, William’s grandfather, Prince Philip of Greece, had a similar ‘kerching’ moment.

During a pantomime at Windsor Castle, the 22-year-old was stunned to see Princess Elizabeth parading across the stage – legs visible – in Aladdin.

It was a far cry from their first recorded meeting at Dartmouth Naval College in July 1939, when Philip was a swaggering 18-year-old cadet and Elizabeth, five years his junior, was a schoolgirl in her socks off, a classic little girl. shoes and an unflattering beret.

Now she was clearly growing into an attractive young woman with undoubtedly shapely legs.

Philip almost didn’t see the panto. He was in bed at London’s Claridge’s Hotel with flu, but rallied in time to attend the show’s third and final night on December 18, 1943, where he saw Elizabeth as the Principal Boy and her 13-year-old sister Margaret. as Princess Roxanne.

An ecstatic Elizabeth said to her governess Marion Crawford, “Who do you think is coming to see us perform, Crawfie?” Philip.”

The princess was red with excitement according to Crawfie, who said: ‘I have never known Lilibet so animated. There was a glow about her that none of us had ever seen before. A lot of people commented on it.”

Philip sat in the front row next to the king and queen and his cousin Princess Marina. The king was more concerned than the prince about his eldest daughter’s costume, which he had personally inspected.

“Lilibet can’t possibly wear that,” he complained to Miss C. “The tunic is too short.”

But wear it, she did.

Meanwhile, from her position in the wings, the governess had the opportunity to give Philip the chance.

“He had changed a lot,” she noted. ‘He was a serious and charming young man who sat there and had nothing of the rather bold boy I had first met from him.’

Crawfie must have missed the pieces when Philip, according to his cousin Alexandra, Queen of Yugoslavia, “nearly fell out of his chair laughing at such corny jokes as . . .”

Widow Twinkey: There’s a big copper in the kitchen.

Princess Elizabeth: We’ll get rid of him soon.

Also in the audience was the Princess’s friend Alethea Fitzalan Howard, who wrote in her diary: Philip ‘seems so fit for gymnastics and I kept wondering today if he is her future husband.

“I think this is the most desirable event that could possibly happen. She would like it and although he couldn’t be in love with her, I don’t think he’s averse to the idea.’

There was even more excitement for the Princess when the King and Queen invited Philip for a weekend at Windsor Castle. A week later he was back with his cousin David Milford-Haven to spend Christmas with the royal family.

Queen Alexandra recalled that on Christmas Eve there was a party of nine sitting down to dinner and that ‘Philip entertained the King with a semi-comical account of the adventures on HMS Wallace off Sicily, when three German aircraft dive-bombed her. ‘

Later they turned off all the lights in the drawing room and told ghost stories by the firelight. “We decided to be afraid,” Margaret wrote, “and we were NOT. Very disappointing.’ You’d suspect that Elizabeth and Philip enjoyed the ghostly blackout more than the complaining princess.

Crawfie received an excited report from Elizabeth: ‘We had a very cheerful time, with a film, dinners and dancing to the gramophone’

The King’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, noted that they “walked and milled around until almost 1am.”

Normally hard to please, Margaret added, “went crazy and we danced and danced and danced…the best night of all.”

In a letter of thanks to Queen Elizabeth, Philip hoped that “my behavior did not get out of hand.”

In another thank you, after another stay a few weeks later, he reflected on how much he loved “the simple pleasure of family fun and entertainment,” and the fact that the King and Queen family made him “feel welcome to share them’. .’

To the young man who had no house to call home since his parents separated when he was nine, the close-knit royal family must have seemed as solid as the stones of Windsor Castle itself.

The rest, as they say, was history. From then on, Philip and Elizabeth took a much greater interest in each other’s lives and activities, and as Marion Crawford noted, Christmas of 1943 was a clear turning point for the young couple.

• Ian Lloyd is author of ‘The Duke: 100 Chapters in the Life of Prince Philip (The History Press)