If only Prince Charles were more like his father. Not the clanger-dropping, inappropriate Philip, but the one who is surprisingly supportive of contemporary design. His annual award, which started out as the gloriously named Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design, is now in its 50th year. It’s just a shame that so few people actually know about it. Who thought the Prince could be so endearingly discreet about his views?

Certain names on this year’s Golden Jubilee shortlist of what is now called the Prince Philip Designers Prize would surely make his son shudder, though with the Duke of Edinburgh’s tendency to make off-colour comments so widely publicised, both could have problems, albeit of different kinds, with the presence of David Adjaye. Joining the architect this year are Hussein Chalayan, Wayne Hemingway, Eric Parry, branding supremos Michael Peters and husband-and-wife team Jay Smith and Howard Milton, Andrew Ritchie (of the Brompton bicycle), and Peter Saville. Belatedly, Jeff Banks is also in the mix, for democratizing fashion through his businesses and the Clothes Show (remember that?). Look out for Gok Wan in 2010.

As for the point of the prize, the prince has said, in a phrase he probably first heard at Gordonstoun, that to make a designer into a public figure ‘gives him confidence and with confidence he’ll do a better job’. Him indeed. Very few women have been shortlisted and just one has won – the knitter Patricia Roberts in 1986 for her lurid Patchwork Sampler Collection.

It’s my suspicion that when Philip first became the Prince Consort, his courtiers rapidly looked around for roles to occupy the wayward aristo and alighted on the previous consort, Albert, for inspiration. Albert’s major move had been the Great Exhibition, a staggering celebration of art and industry; why not make the same association with Philip? What they might not have anticipated was his genuine interest, particularly in engineering. After all, not known for his endless patience, it’s hard to imagine the royal one fulfilling his job as (an apparently hands-on) chairman of the prize committee for 50 years if he wasn’t enjoying it. Philip himself puts his interest down to an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of design in post-war Britain.

In a recent, recorded interview for the Design Council with the equally princely Kevin McCloud on the subject, Philip does come across as an enthusiast rather than an expert. ‘It’s astonishing how imaginative they are,’ he exclaims of the Royal College of Arts students, whose work he has seen. He has no truck with technology and it seems unlikely to darken the doors of his award. Of websites he says: ‘I don’t see them often, but the ones I have seen are so bloody awful it’s untrue. They’re so unfit for purpose. I can’t understand why people tolerate them.’ Of new-fangled televisions, he says: ‘you have to make love to the bloody set before you can find the switch that turns it on’. And of new ideas (here we go): ‘the moment you make a success of anything, some Chinese comes and buys it up.’ It’s a bit like eavesdropping on a tête-à-tête in the sort of gentleman’s club where women are still personae non grata and food is of the steamed variety.

But that’s Philip, a pre-feminist guy. I recall the awards ceremony of 2006 when, having made a credible, enthusiastic and articulate speech, with no visible notes, on the importance and relevance of the design industry, he announced the winner as Thomas Heatherwick. Heatherwick, who had been up against Richard Rogers and David Mellor, accepted it with the memorable words, ‘this is ridiculous,’ and afterwards spoke with the prince, who was rather transparently more interested in the designer’s attractive female assistant and girlfriend.

This year how the judges can choose between branding, bicycles and big buildings remains to be seen. But the prize has never shied away from design’s plurality. When it was awarded to a specific design from 1949 to 1989, it was won by a fridge, a toy, a digital micrometer and a Westland helicopter, not to mention a new silk, acetate and rayon furnishing fabric that set pulses racing in 1962. (‘I’m not mad about synthetic fabrics, unless they’re mixed,’ says Philip to McCloud.) Since 1990, when it has acknowledged a designer’s overall contribution to design, recipients have included graphic designer Alan Fletcher, architect Michael Hopkins and illustrator David Gentleman.

The scheme is run by the Design Council, as part of its remit to big-up design’s value to industry. The prize is simply that of recognition. An evening with Prince Philip, this year at Buckingham Palace. That being the case, one hopes it goes to the talented and louche Peter Saville this year. You can’t help feeling that him and Philip might have a bit in common.