I began to watch Prince Andrew’s bombshell BBC interview sitting upright on my favorite armchair.
I finished it curled up on the floor in a tight little ball, my hands tightly covering my eyes as beads of ice cold sweat illuminated my forehead – ironically, given His Royal Highness’s bizarre proclamation that he is incapable of perspiring.
This was the most excruciating thing I have ever witnessed on TV, even eclipsing President Clinton telling the American people: ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.’
And it was about as plausible as Clinton’s performance too.
I don’t know for sure whether Andrew repeatedly had sex with a 17-year-old girl, Virginia Roberts, who says she was trafficked to him by serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
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Prince Andrew’s BBC interview was the most excruciating thing I have ever witnessed on TV, even eclipsing President Clinton telling the American people: ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky’ (right)
But I do know this: I believe his vehement denials a lot less now than I did before he submitted himself to this gargantuan steaming hot mess of an interview.
As always with those who have something to hide, it was the dumb little lies that repeatedly tripped him up.
Andrew was adamant: he did not go partying with Roberts at London’s fashionable Tramp nightclub in 2001, didn’t have sex with her that same night, and has ‘no recollection’ of ever meeting her.
Curiously, his erratic memory is VERY specific that he took his daughter Beatrice to a pizza restaurant that same afternoon – March 10 – because her mother, his ex wife Sarah Ferguson, was abroad and he was in charge of their two children.
Though quite why a 4pm pizza is an alibi for an attendance at a nightclub many hours later is lost on me.
To support her story, Roberts produced a now infamous photo of Andrew apparently hugging her at the London home of Epstein’s close friend and alleged fellow procurer of underage girls, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Andrew inferred the photo might have been faked, because he said he never goes out in London without wearing a suit and tie and in the photo he’s sporting his casual ‘travelling clothes’.
Yet within seconds of him making that claim, Twitter blew up with paparazzi photos of him stumbling out of another London club, Chinawhite, in July 2000, just a year before, wearing an open neck shirt, unbuttoned half way down like Simon Cowell, and in black jeans.
Andrew inferred this infamous photo taken with a 17-year-old Virginia Roberts in 2001 might have been faked, because he said he never goes out in London without wearing a suit and tie and in the photo he’s sporting his casual ‘travelling clothes’
Yet within seconds of him making that claim, Twitter blew up with paparazzi photos of him stumbling out of another London club, Chinawhite, in July 2000, just a year before, wearing an open neck shirt, unbuttoned half way down like Simon Cowell, and in black jeans
In fact, dressed in very similar fashion to how he looks in the Roberts photo.
Andrew then said he never hugs people like he’s seen doing with Roberts. Yet again, social media immediately found pictures of him hugging a variety of women.
He also said the photo, the one he wants to believe is a fake with a woman he has ‘no recollection’ of meeting, was taken upstairs at Maxwell’s home and he never went upstairs.
Now, call me stupid, but if he’d never been upstairs, how would he know this photo was taken upstairs?
The lies kept coming.
Andrew said he didn’t know where the bar was at Tramp, where he has partied for decades, and despite the fact the bar is just 10 meters from the dance-floor and close to the toilets.
I’ve been a member of Tramp – you’d have to be Stevie Wonder to get away with saying you don’t know where the bar is.
And then we arrived at sweat-gate, his most absurdly disingenuous claim of them all.
Roberts said he sweated profusely as they danced in Tramp.
‘Fake news!’ cried Andrew, almost gleefully. He can’t physically sweat, he insisted, because of a traumatic reaction to being shot at when he served in the British armed forces during the Falklands War in 1982.
(This conveniently reminded us of his war hero credentials, which has always been the wayward prince’s most effective deflection tool.)
Andrew then said he never hugs people like he’s seen doing with Roberts. Yet again, social media immediately found pictures of him hugging a variety of women
Of course, within seconds, photos of him sweating also appeared online, and most medical experts have dismissed his ‘I can’t sweat’ condition as utter nonsense.
None of these brazen lies in themselves makes him necessarily guilty of having sex with a trafficked 17-year-old girl, or of knowing about Epstein’s abuse, but taken in their entirety, they suggest the Duke of York speaks with forked tongue.
And it also begs the question: if he’s lying about the little stuff, how can we believe him on the big stuff?
The more Andrew spoke, the more self-inflicted damage he caused to himself.
He came over exactly as his many critics have long depicted him: preposterously smug, arrogant, out-of-touch, deluded and pompous: a massively privileged man who’s led a life of unimaginable luxury in servant-laden palaces, and has never had to answer for anything.
He was also chronically, shockingly lacking in even a semblance of self-awareness.
It was like he couldn’t even hear the crap coming out of his own mouth.
The big question surrounding this whole scandal is what Andrew knew about vile Epstein’s disgusting abuse of myriad under-age girls, and when did he know it?
He insists he suspected nothing untoward before Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a 14-year-old girl for prostitution.
This, despite spending frequent time with the pedophile in his various luxury homes where we now know hordes of these girls were constantly brought in and out.
And Andrew says the only reason he saw Epstein again in New York in 2010, after his release from prison, was to break off the friendship.
Yet none of that stacks up to even a scintilla of sensible scrutiny.
Andrew spent FOUR DAYS at Epstein’s Manhattan home on that trip, enjoying dinner parties and cosy strolls with him through Central Park.
Andrew says the only reason he saw Epstein again in New York in 2010, after his release from prison, was to break off the friendship. Yet none of that stacks up to even a scintilla of sensible scrutiny. Andrew spent FOUR DAYS at Epstein’s Manhattan home on that trip, enjoying dinner parties and cosy strolls with him through Central Park (above)
He was even caught on camera giggling goodbye to a young woman as she left the house, and newspaper investigators witnessed many other young women coming and going during his stay.
Who spends four days telling their pedophile friend they don’t want to see them any more?
Who doesn’t notice their pedophile friend is having endless young female visitors to his house while they themselves are in it?
Who, to put it bluntly, expects anyone to believe any of this bullsh*t?
Andrew explained his decision to spend so long at Epstein’s house by saying it was a ‘convenient place to stay’.
SORRY?
He hung out with a convicted child abuser for over half a week because it was ‘convenient’?
This was almost as repulsive as his comment that Epstein’s abuse of underage girls had been ‘unbecoming’, as if it were akin to welching on a gambling debt to a casino.
And why was he motivated to fly to New York to supposedly break all future contact with Epstein – something he could have done with a single phone call from London?
Oh, Andrew said it was because he’s simply TOO ‘honorable’.
Of course!
The absolutely ‘too honorable’ thing to do when someone you know is convicted of abusing kids is to go and party with them at their house for four days!
How silly of us.
Photos show Prince Andrew enjoying the attentions of several women. In this photo, taken on the French Riviera in July 2007 the Prince looks wild-eyed as he parties with American socialite Chris Von Aspen, who licks him
Only it’s not silly of us, it’s actually stupendously silly of Andrew to think we would fall for any of his pathetic rewriting of history.
There were so many gut-wrenching moments in this hour-long fiasco that I simply haven’t got time to list them all.
Suffice it to say that the very worst was his abject failure to even acknowledge the appalling suffering of Epstein’s many victims.
Andrew seemed far more concerned with his own victimhood than with the ruined lives of so many young girls at the hands of his monstrous friends.
His shocking lack of any remorse was a stark, horrible omission. Yet so perfectly in keeping with a man whose reputation has long been of stunning selfishness.
This is a guy with two daughters, for God’s sake – could he not find it in himself to just say how sorry he felt for the many other daughters who were so brutally abused by Epstein?
No, it turned out he couldn’t.
By the end of BBC Newsnight star interviewer Emily Maitlis’s expert forensic questioning, Andrew fell back on the new modern catch-all defense for any personal failing and cited ‘mental health’ problems for his lack of judgement.
This disgraceful piece of cynical, invented virtue-signalling garbage made me want to vomit.
Prince Andrew’ hasn’t got mental health issues, he’s got telling-the-truth issues.
At the end of the interview, stone-faced Maitlis said simply: ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness.’
These words sounded so horrifically inappropriate after what we’d all just endured.
Andrew’s arrogance initially made him think this train-wreck PR move was a big success. That is reportedly what he told his mother the Queen.
By the end of BBC Newsnight star interviewer Emily Maitlis’s expert forensic questioning, Andrew fell back on the new modern catch-all defense for any personal failing and cited ‘mental health’ problems for his lack of judgement. This disgraceful piece of cynical, invented virtue-signalling garbage made me want to vomit
But Her Majesty knows better, because she’s 100 times smarter and wiser than her son – that’s why she’s never done an interview in her life, let alone decamp to a convicted pedophiles home for four days.
And I’m sure the Queen will realize that Andrew’s confessional makes all of Meghan and Harry’s hypocritical hijinks this year pale into insignificance.
This is a very serious crisis for the Royal Family, one Andrew just made a gazillion times worse.
It’s surely unthinkable that any charity he works with will want to continue the association after this disaster that raises so many more questions than it answered?
The only way Andrew can truly close it down in the way he wishes is for him to now co-operate fully with the FBI investigating Epstein’s crimes – and testify under oath as to what he saw, knew and did.
He can also authorize the Royal Protection Squad who would have been with him the entire time, to also speak to the FBI and tell them what they saw, and what they logged in official records.
They will know when and where every pizza’s been eaten, what nightclubs were attended on what day and what time, and details of every woman with whom Andrew’s ever had any kind of sexual encounter.
Every movement by the senior royals is filed by their cops.
They were there.
They know.
And until Prince Pinocchio exposes himself and his protection officers to proper FBI interrogation, then the stench of guilt will lurk around him so strongly he will be rendered unfit for purpose as a working royal.
