HERO WORSHIP: Chief Jack Naiva and villagers with their treasured photos of the Prince [REX]

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The villagers were pouring in to the meeting ground from the surrounding bush, some of the men carrying machetes. I smiled and said the only word of their language I knew. It meant both "good" and "hello". No one replied.



I'd had visions of what it would be like to arrive on a remote Pacific island. It would be a warm, sandy little place surrounded by calm blue seas and topped with swaying palms. The islanders would serenade me with ukuleles while comely girls in grass skirts put garlands around my neck.



Nothing I'd seen so far of the island of Tanna matched that picture. The sea was grey and choppy, the beaches made of black sand and the interior was composed of dense bush with forlorn villages clinging to steep mountain ridges. A sharp breeze blew through the trees. The villagers, clad mainly in shabby football shirts and shorts, shivered and carried on staring.



A shout from the little enclosure of reed huts behind made everyone turn around. An old man with a cloud of white afro hair paced out carefully. Everyone parted, shuffling aside respectfully. I guessed this was Jack Naiva, the chief of Yaohnanen village. He wore a tracksuit top and a sarong, holding its hem daintily as he walked on thin, mahogany legs.



He padded right over to me, straightening up and giving me a long, searching look as if he might be downloading the contents of my soul for later inspection. Then he shook my hand. His grip felt like leaves: cool and dry. He spoke: "Prince Philip. I want him to come."





It sounded heartfelt but irritable as if Prince Philip was a bus that was long overdue. Then the chief sat down on a log and motioned to me to do the same. As soon as I'd done this the entire village sank as one to the floor, encircling us and the chief pointed at me with a long, twiggy finger. His meaning was clear: why are you here? It's lucky that they like long stories on Tanna because mine started with a train in 1982. The train took people from my home town of Southport to Manchester and it went right past my bedroom window.



One day in his capacity as vice chancellor of Salford University Prince Philip travelled to Manchester, doubtless not on that train but in our house we developed a joke about him clattering by and waving at us. For that reason, my 11-year-old self took more than the usual interest in Philip's visit where he, true to form, made people cross with a comment about population control.

TRIBE ICON: The villagers believe Prince Philip will come [GETTY]

It sounded heartfelt but irritable as if Prince Philip was a bus that was long overdue

I noticed that people almost seemed to enjoy being cross about him. Children are preoccupied with fairness, perhaps because they so often feel short-changed by the adult world, and I felt there was something unfair in the way people treated Philip.



Then adolescence kicked in and I realised that you could not hope to be a Prince Philip fan at a Northern boys' school in the Eighties. But one day in a university lecture hall my interest in Philip came rushing back. We undergraduate anthropologists were learning about "cargo cults" - religious and political movements in the South Pacific - and the lecturer mentioned an island called Tanna where people worshipped Prince Philip. I was so struck by the news that I approached her afterwards and asked her for more information. She couldn't give me any though.



I hunted on. It seemed that in the archipelago of Vanuatu (previously an Anglo-French colony called the New Hebrides), there was one village whose people had identified Prince Philip as a long-departed mountain god of theirs during visits he made to the islands, first on his own in 1971 and then with the Queen in 1974.



Matthew Baylis At the time Philip was unaware of the cult until the matter was brought to his attention by the area's British commissioner. He suggested to London that the Prince send a signed official photograph of himself, that was duly dispatched.



The delighted villagers responded by sending back a traditional pig killing club called a nal-nal - and the Prince's place in their affections was cemented still further when he sent a second photograph of himself holding the nal-nal.



It drove me to discover more about this cult. I knew what the followers believed but I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what good it did them. So one day eight years ago I travelled 12,000 miles to Tanna to find out.



When I'd finished my explanation the villagers nodded and slapped their shins in approval. "You will find out everything here," chief Jack said, beaming. I grabbed my pen excitedly. "Right, can you tell me when you first…" I trailed off. They were giving me appalled looks as if my phone had gone off at the opera.



"Not now," the chief said. "Now, we have to drink kava."



I would have to drink a lot of kava over the coming weeks: a muddy, narcotic beverage made by small boys who chew up roots, spit the mass out and strain water through it. Appalling as it may sound the effects are very pleasant.



The main activity though is what they call in the pidgin English used throughout these islands, "storian".



It means to chat, to swap gossip. That's really how they worship Prince Philip: by talking softly about him around their smoky fires, over swigs of kava as the sun goes down.



They tell stories of his "exploits": that he was a captain of a warship, a cowboy, a great sorcerer who seduced a white queen.



They link world events to the doings of their mountain god. To give a recent example they say that Philip ensured that a black man became the leader of the US and used his magic to help him find Osama bin Laden.



One of the things that strikes visitors to this part of the world is how much free time the people have. They turn their backs on cash, preferring to grow their own food and obtain clothing from the missionaries.

The cult explorer Matthew Baylis [TIM CLARKE]