‘Run out the clock’: Dark King Charles claim emerges as he battles cancer

King Charles’ health has come under fresh scrutiny after a crony of Prince Andrew made some disturbing new comments recently.

Prince Andrew must be so proud. He has done what 300 years of Whigs, Conservatives, Labourites and the Great British Bake Off have failed to do – he’s united the UK.

He is, quite simply, all but uniformly despised. (Well, aside from a few port-soaked sorts who think women and cab drivers have gotten a bit uppity and who describe tapas as “foreign muck”).

He is the appendix of the royal family – a dangly, useless protuberance who serves no function.

But get ready, because you are about to dislike Andrew even more. (I know, I too had thought this was an impossibility).

Thanks to his nearly fathomless depths of self-interest, now an ally of the duke has stirred up fresh fears about King Charles’ health.

Let me explain.

For nearly two years now, while the Duke of Yuck has been idling away his days memorising the lines of old Benny Hill VHS tapes and dodging ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York’s entreaties to give her bunions a good hard rub, his brother the King has been trying to evict him from his grand home, Royal Lodge.

Never one to sit around and wallow, after his diagnosis with an unspecified form of cancer, His Majesty took the briefest of breaks possible from public facing duties before throwing himself back into that very British pastime of Just Getting On With It.

For nearly two years, King Charles has been trying to evict Prince Andrew from his grand home, Royal Lodge. Picture: Yui Mok/Pool/AFP

The King’s treatment regimen has not damped down his keenness to extricate Andrew from the 30-room Lodge and to relocate him to a property far more in line with his vastly reduced status. (Rubs hands with ill-disguised glee).

In August, it emerged that the monarch had stepped things up by withdrawing his funding for Andrew’s private bodyguards. (If ever there was a man who deserved to be visited by some pitchfork-brandishing villagers …)

Except this upping of the stakes has only made the duke dig his heels in further, with him continuing to send his proxies forth to try and paint him as a victim to the press. Andrew would not be leaving his vast stately home, these chums spluttered indignantly, because he has a Ribena-stained lease.

However, the most recent instance of this has seen one of the duke’s cronies, speaking to the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, make some highly tasteless comments that have only sparked new concerns about Charles.

Asked by Sykes how the 64-year-old plans to best his brother, the royal friend came out with this absolute howler: “Andrew can sit tight and run out the clock”.

Which is not just horrifically callous, but also has highly disturbing implications. What exactly might “run out the clock” mean?

The friend, then asked by Sykes if the implication was that “Andrew thought Charles might die before he could evict Andrew”, then just twittered about the lease the duke has for the property, which, you of course have noted, is not quite a denial.

What could ‘run out the clock’ mean? Picture: Jane Barlow – WPA Pool/Getty Images

The duke’s confidant also went on to say that, “Andrew wants his brother to live long and prosper. He is intensely loyal to the monarchy. But it’s not exactly a state secret that Andrew is more than a decade younger than his brother, and that Charles has cancer”.

Isn’t it nice to see that the disgraced former trade ambassadors’ friends are as offensive and insensitive as he is, huh?

These “run out the clock” comments come after the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden stoked worry about the King last month when he reported that “more than one friend of the Yorks has suggested” that the reason that Charles is agitating to such a degree to oust his brother could be because he “sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla”.

So, ask yourself, what do we really know about Charles’ health? Really, the world remains as much in the dark today as we were back in February when the King broke the news.

While Kate, the Princess of Wales, who has also been treated for cancer this year, has issued a series of statements about her progress, Buckingham Palace has not, aside from announcing that doctors were “sufficiently pleased with the progress” to let him get back out there to glad hands and let regional lord mayors touch the hem of his garment.

Could Charles be agitating to such a degree to oust his brother be because he ‘sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla’? Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Princess Kate, who has also been treated for cancer this year, has issued a series of statements about her progress, but Buckingham Palace has not. Picture: Shi Tang/Getty Images

Unlike Kate, we don’t know what sort of treatment exactly he is undergoing (the princess told the world she was having chemotherapy) nor has the Palace provided any even oblique updates about how it is going, unlike her highly personal June statement talking about “good days and bad days”.

The problem with an information vacuum is that every time something crops up like the idea that horrid Andrew is “running out the clock” on his sick brother, or that Royal Lodge could have been earmarked for a widowed Camilla, then it will inevitably only provoke alarm and some medium grade palpitations.

It’s time, I say. Time to end this unseemly siege and time for Andrew to get a fresh new serving of comeuppance.

When the King and Queen head to Australia next month on tour, they simply need to send in whatever the British equivalent of SWAT is, or at least two bulky men named Dave from down the pub who have no compunction about a bit of manhandling.

The Duke of York might be sitting tight, but it’s time he was introduced to some very just desserts.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Run out the clock’: Dark King Charles claim emerges as he battles cancer