The venue was a place in Park Lane but something went wrong, I forget what. Anyway, I was seriously late for the lunchtime event.

Dashing through the door, I saw with relief that the Prince had not left and was standing isolated with one other person at the front of the hall. If a Fleet Street news desk tells you to do something, you do it, especially if you are only a few weeks into the job. Without looking to right or left, I pushed through the assembled murmuring throng, strode across the open space of ballroom floor and shook his hand.

"Ah, a special one just for you," came the murmured royal response and he smiled, not at all perturbed.

Hurriedly withdrawing and puzzled by the remark, I looked round. The ghastly truth became apparent. The event was not over, it had barely begun. The great and the good gazed with cool distaste at this red-faced interloper or maniac who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and a few moments later they started to form a decorous queue to be properly introduced to royalty.

Prince Philip's kindliness in the face of such ineptitude deserves mention since it's so often assumed he is just the opposite. He gets a bad press when his of-the-cuff remarks are reported and we tend to hang these on to a bare skeleton and imagine it's a rounded picture of the man. The truth is we don't know what he is really like and this is something a new two-part documentary series may put right. It claims to offer a personal insight into the Prince's life and work .

Over the past six decades as consort to the Queen, he has been a constant figure in our lives but still remains something of an enigma. Bombastic and autocratic say his critics. Colourful and stimulating say his admirers. Famous for his so-called gaffes, while some of his initiatives have shown him to be a man ahead of his time, such as The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, which has been an outstanding success and imitated around the world.

Granted unparalleled access over recent months, ITV has followed the Prince, producing a fascinating chronicle of the solo portfolio HRH has carved out for himself. The films include an exclusive conversation between the Prince and Sir Trevor McDonald at the Prince's Sandringham private estate and never-before-seen cine footage of his travels around the world, taken from private film archive which he shot himself.

For the past 50 years the Prince has been a keen conservationist, with international president of the World Wide Fund for Nature among his roles. Soon after being released from hospital having been treated for a chest infection, the Prince invited Sir Trevor McDonald for a tour of the Sandringham private estate and the conservation projects he has initiated there, plus to talk on camera about his life's work.

"Conservation is not a romantic business, it's a very practical business – trying to ensure as many different species of wildlife can exist, which means in some cases controlling some so the others can have a better chance," he said.

The Prince also puts into practice his conservation beliefs. For example, he was one of the first to drive an electric car, and he installed solar panels at Sandringham as far back as the 1970s, before it was fashionable to do so. Many of the fields on the estate have big margins at the edges which remain uncultivated in order to encourage wildlife, and the Prince implemented a programme of hedge-planting some 20 years ago to encourage birds and other wildlife.

At 86-years-old, the Prince shows no signs of slowing his commitment to public life. Cameras follow HRH on a range of royal visits and appointments including one for the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Uganda last November, where the Prince squeezed a flying visit by light aircraft to the Queen Elizabeth National Park, which he first visited with the Queen back in 1954. Cameras also film the Prince at the recent state visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his new bride Carla Bruni.

Throughout the programmes several eminent individuals including Sir David Attenborough, journalist Andrew Neil, and Charles Clarke MP offer their assessment on the contribution the Prince has made to public life.

Andrew Neil said: "The world's not fair. If the press concentrates more on the Prince's gaffes than on his charitable works then I guess that's the way the world is."

He adds: "Prince Philip is not a man who forgets grudges and I think he bears them pretty well. It's something rather endearing. Given that so much of the British upper class put on a false image, if he's got a grudge against you, he lets you know."

The Duke: A Portrait of Prince Philip, Monday and Tuesday ITV1, 9pm.