Post navigation Prince Philip and the blue-arsed fly There was a recent surge of media interest when the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) put out a call for members of the public to help them find early evidence for a range of terms, including come in from the cold , disco , and blue-arsed fly . This last term sparked interest here in Australia because the OED claimed that the earliest evidence in print for the term was from Prince Philip commenting, in 1970, that a photographer had been 'running around like a blue-arsed fly '. Prince Philip watching out for a blue-arsed fly, perhaps Many Australians were outraged not only that Prince Philip was cited as providing the first evidence for a term that they believed had been around much earlier, but also that the term was not considered to be Australian. One letter to the editor of The Australian by a West Australian commented: As schoolboys in the 1950s, my mates and I often ran about like blue-arsed flies , incurring the wrath of parents and teachers. For the Duke of Edinburgh to be given credit for a 1970 use hardly seems right. (6 October 2012). So what is the story of blue-arsed fly ? And is it Australian? Although the OED claims the term blue-arsed is first recorded in 1970, the variant form blue-assed -- of English regional and US origin -- was recorded as early as 1932. In fact, there is ample evidence in print