Royals: Prince Andrew was born into a life in which he simply cannot lose

A lifetime on the golf course is hardly a punishment for Prince Andrew. He’s been born into a life in which he simply cannot lose.

Prince Andrew with President Bill Clinton during a round of golf at Martha's Vineyard in 1999.

It is now eight days since Prince Andrew’s extraordinary Newsnight interview and I am still struggling to get my head round the extent of his — well, I think the respectful term is thickness.

Did he really expect us to believe that utter baloney? The sweating, the dough balls, the claim he wasn’t “very close” to Jeffrey Epstein, yet he still felt the need to visit him in person in New York in order to dump him in person during four days of partying.

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Why couldn’t he cut him silently, as per royal tradition? No decent royal ever slags people off to their faces. Not a single one of his statements stood up to scrutiny — even the claim that he’d stayed with the consul-general in New York turned out to be rubbish.

Sir Thomas Harris said he had “no recollection” of Andrew visiting in April 2001: “no recollection” in the normal, human sense, that is, meaning “it didn’t happen”, not the Prince Andrew sense, which means “it did happen, but I’m not going to say so in case someone sues”.

Newsnight's Emily Maitlis interviews Prince Andrew. Picture: BBC

I read Sir Thomas’s words with sadness: was anything the prince said actually true? Or was he living in a toxic fantasy in which the truth is whatever he wants it to be because he has hot and cold running courtiers to facilitate it? The answer, obviously, is yes.

Just as the Queen thinks the world smells of fresh paint, Andrew clearly believes that the world is lined with topless models and aides telling him it’s a genius idea to bring up his “peculiar medical condition” on national television. His interview was devastating because it exposed the damaging lie at the heart of the monarchy: that the royals are cosy and accessible and just like you and me, when they aren’t.

You only had to listen to the cringe-making way he described his mysterious royal “standards” or the pompous mechanics of his daily life to know that he is so removed from reality that he probably still doesn’t know whether it’s OK to stay with a paedophile in his sex dungeon or not.

Prince Andrew during a golf tournament in Palo Alto, California.

The Duke of York hits off at the Wentworth Golf Club.

He blithely told Emily Maitlis that, yeah, he’s still in touch with Ghislaine Maxwell and spoke to her “earlier this year, funnily enough”. But there’s nothing funny about it, is there, Andrew? And, by the way, could you tell us where she is?

His carelessness reminded me of the pain on my mother’s face when she found out about Princess Margaret. She’d read a book about how vile the Queen’s sister was — the princess refused to let even pregnant women sit in her presence and once asked a disabled architect if he’d ever “looked in the mirror and seen the way you walk”.

“But why haven’t we been told they’re this awful?” wailed my mother. But I think we can say we’ve found out now.

Andrew, for example, is so spoilt he doesn’t even see or hear people, describing Epstein’s house in Manhattan as a “railway station” where he couldn’t even be bothered to process the number of “staff” on hand to silently help him. This wilful blindness extends not only to what he’d call “civilians”, but even his own mother.

On Thursday, he was still planning to visit Bahrain as part of his royal duties, having not apparently listened when the Queen had told him he needed to drop them a mere 24 hours earlier. Only when someone alerted him to the fact this was “not a good idea” did he cancel the trip — as Fergie put it: Andrew is “not very quick on his feet”. Imagine being called thick by a woman who once, for a diet, spent three weeks “drinking clay”.

Prince Charles, left, and his brother Prince Andrew.

In fact, I don’t think Andrew will change his behaviour. Why should he? How can he? Why would anyone who’s started every day of his life shouting “f**k off” at whichever poor footman is opening his bed curtains decide to cease to behave like an apex git?

He will mostly be divested of the more tedious aspects of his royal obligations — no more opening hospitals, touring denture factories or any of the more leaden Princess Anne stuff that gets in the way of his tits’n’tiaras lifestyle. A lifetime on the golf course is hardly a punishment for Andrew — Prince Harry for one will be furious that his uncle has managed to pull off the dream scenario of no engagements and no small talk while he and Meghan are still being subjected to all manner of humiliations, such as scrutiny and basic transparency.

Only in the royal family can disgrace mean less work and more tittays. There is the minor irritation for Andrew over what will happen to the Yorkies — I doubt Princess Beatrice will get her big fat wedding now. But this won’t end badly for Andy — not when the Queen is still rushing to take him out riding as she did on Friday. He’s been born into a life in which he simply cannot lose.

The Sunday Times