Days after his infamous interview Prince Andrew was forced to ignominiously step down as a working member of the family. Video / BBC / AP
OPINION:
Sometimes irony is just too perfect. In the late aughties, the British press got wind of the fact that Prince Andrew, Duke of York, had developed quite the taste for extravagant travel, promptly dubbing him Airmiles Andy.
Every year, at least, we were treated to a fresh story about some ridiculous, lavish trip where he managed to spend more on some quickie royal outing that most people earn in a year. ($63,000 for a helicopter to take him to Scotland to play golf. A $297,000 bill for a three-day trip to the Middle East. You get the idea.)
When it came to Andrew, he seemed perpetually in motion, travelling to Bahrain, China, Switzerland, Vietnam, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the US, Kuwait, Germany, Canada, Afghanistan, France, United Arab Emirates, India, Turkey and Australia in an official capacity, partying with his famous chums in Miami, Thailand, the South of France and playing golf in Spain.
He might have a dearth of good sense, taste, or modesty, but he had a workhorse of a passport.
Prince Andrew is now living like a ‘recluse’. Photo / AP
So, what more exquisite punishment could there be for the now-disgraced royal than the fact that these days he is, according to a new report, a “virtual recluse”?
Not only in the three years since his catastrophic Newsnightinterview has the black sheep Duke not left UK shores, but now The Telegraphhas revealed just how dismal and pathetic the 62-year-old’s days are.
While the world might have largely restarted post-pandemic – sourdough starters forgotten, Zoom trivia sessions blessedly consigned to the past – Andrew’s life, per the Telegraph, looks decidedly 2020-esque.
One contact has described him to journalist Camilla Tominey as having “been in his own form of lockdown for the past three years,” albeit in his 31-room home Royal Lodge replete with chef, housekeeper, personal assistants and other staff.
The Duke is, she writes, “now a virtual recluse, only venturing out to go horseriding on the Windsor estate twice a week, or for the occasional swim”.
As one source told the Telegraph, “These days, he barely goes out at all. He rarely goes out socially in the evening – where would he go? The only times he used to go out were to visit the Queen at the castle and now he can’t even do that.”
“He had a genuinely amazing relationship with his mother,” another source has said. “He’s bereft right now.”
Prince Andrew stepped down as a working royal after his disastrous BBC interview in 2019. Photo / Supplied
Even before Queen Elizabeth passed away in September, his life was reportedly extremely lonely with a friend telling The Times in June that, after years of exile, he was “climbing the walls”.
Is Andrew being stuck at home that much of a surprise given the question of, what sane, sensible person aside would be willing to be seen within sweating distance of him?
While Tominey’s piece includes quotes from those who know Andrew, not one is named. The only people who have been publicly spotted with the disgraced Duke are his lawyer, Gary Bloxsome, with whom he reportedly occasionally plays golf, and his ex-wife and housemate, Sarah, Duchess of York, with whom he is sometimes reportedly seen walking their five Norfolk terriers.
Whenever he has been photographed riding in Windsor Great Park, it is generally only with a groom by his side.
“Andrew is an outsider, an outcast, in fact – not precisely shunned, but forced to avoid many of the people and places that mean most to him,” the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay reported last year.
The answer is, pretty much every other unemployed person has ever done: He watches TV, having “become an enthusiastic binge-watcher of TV box sets.”.
In fact, Kay last year revealed that one visitor to Royal Lodge saw “Andrew slumped on a sofa. A huge television was on.”
Hours later when the guest was leaving, the Duke “was still in front of the TV.”
Andrew’s life is “incredibly lonely". Photo / AP
It is strange to think that it is only three years ago next month that Andrew sat down with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis for an interview that he thought would “draw a line” under his sordid friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Reportedly, the only person with any inkling this might be a dangerous tactic was his daughter Princess Beatrice, with a well-placed source telling The Telegraphthat, “Bea warned that it was all a very bad idea, but unfortunately no one listened to her.”
Not only did her father not heed her warning but he then proceeded to give a stupendously pompous performance, wheeling about his now infamous lines about not being able to sweat and his claim about Pizza Express in Woking that were equally ridiculous and risible.
It still – and will forever more – boggle the mind that after recording the interview inside Buckingham Palace, Andrew felt he had done a smashing job, with producer Sam McCallister recounting in her book Scoop earlier this year that after filming ended: “I’d expected [his private secretary Amanda Thirsk] to be distraught, the Prince to look shaken or concerned, but he seemed ebullient.
“And then it hit me: he actually thought it had gone well. In fact he was in fine spirits!”
Within days of the interview airing on November 19, 2019, the axe would fall on the puffed-up royal’s official career.
Then, in 2021 he was sued in a New York civil case for allegedly sexually abusing Virginia Giuffre on three occasions when she was a teenager. (Andrew has always vehemently denied the claims) Earlier this year the case was settled out of court for a sum now reported to be about $14.3 million.
What I really wonder is, as we approach the third anniversary of Andrew’s personal Hindenburg, the prime-time iceberg he sailed directly into while whistling a happy tune, the question is, does he finally get it? Does he understand and accept why he is now and will forever more be the most disliked member of the royal family?
I think you know the answer. This is Andrew we are talking about.
According to Tominey, these days he is “sanguine” and has spent the last few years in “intense self-reflection,” with one insider telling her that Andrew is now “much more thoughtful and more mindful than he has ever been”.
Andrew had a close relationship with the Queen. Photo / Getty Images
Given how low the bar was to start, that’s hardly saying much now is it?
“He acknowledges privately that Newsnight was by no means his finest hour,” one friend is quoted as saying, which I think really tells us a lot.
That Andrew, after losing 200-place patronages, his HRH, his position as a working member of the royal family, and any shred of public respect or support that he only thinks his prime time turn was “by no means his finest hour” really says everything doesn’t it?
Andrew is still Andrew, seemingly stuck stewing inside the enormous house for which he pays a pittance in rent, occasionally doing some ‘reflecting.’ Jeez. What a marvel of a man.
The fact is, if after everything, if after the years stuck at home on the sofa, the years of isolation, ignominy and millions in legal bills, Andrew cannot recognise the horrible errors of judgment he has made and his egregious moral failings then he never will.
No matter how often his friends might give quotes to the UK press to seek to humanise him or try and curry even a hint of sympathy for the black sheep Duke, this life of daytime TV and lonely horse rides will be all he can look forward to.
There is one last interesting thing that Tominey raises – the question of Andrew’s bank account. For decades the Yorks’ finances have been a topsy-turvy mess, including how they managed to find the coin to purchase a $30 million-plus Swiss chalet.
However now, per the Telegraph, Fergie, thanks to her Mills & Boon books, is worth “in the low millions,” while Andrew’s mummy is said to have “looked after” her son.
“Keeping them financially secure actually protects the institution – it means they don’t need to go looking for funding elsewhere which has landed them in trouble in the past,” a source has said.
Which, I suppose, is smart given that finding trouble is Andrew’s only real talent isn’t it?
All of this must come as a relief for Andrew’s passport, never again to be imperiously thrust at some poor airport official by the ham-handed Duke.
