[Twosugars]

In his interview with Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew seemed bemused by his public image, saying: ‘I never have really partied.’ His past tells a different story.

What was most striking about the Duke of York’s interview with Emily Maitlis? It was a toss-up: his views on sex (it’s a “positive act” for a man, apparently; and if you can’t remember it, ergo it didn’t happen) set off a logical cascade into the abyss (if, by extension, it’s a negative act for women, does that mean we don’t “decide” to do it? In which case, are we always, basically, waiting for it to be done?). His line about adrenaline – that he overdosed on it during the Falklands war, and can therefore no longer sweat – has triggered a race between medics and picture editors to see who can disprove him fastest. His use of the Pizza Express in Woking as an alibi circa 2001 has generated a lot of mirth (check out online reviews since Sunday night). But surely the slam-dunk astonishment lay in what he didn’t say: that he was sorry for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein; or indeed, that he had given them any thought at all.

“There was always something tragicomic to Prince Andrew’s trajectory,” says Catherine Mayer, the author of The Royal Family: Britain’s Resilient Monarchy, and the leader of the Women’s Equality party. “Or at least it was tragicomic until we found out about his association with Epstein, and then the comedy drained away.” The “playboy prince”, they called him in the 1990s, after his divorce from Sarah Ferguson; before the marriage, pretty much from the age of 18, he was known as Randy Andy, or as the Daily Mail put it, “Randy Andy and His Web of Armcandy”.

Not that the prince would recognise this characterisation. Asked by Maitlis why the public perceived him as “the party prince”, he told her this was “a bit of a stretch. I don’t know why I’ve collected that title because I don’t … I never have really partied.”

In his youth, though, partying was what second sons were expected to do. As Alan Rusbridger put it in 1986, “that is the problem with being the younger brother of the heir to the British throne. The press can, on the whole, think of only one interesting thing about you, and that is who you go out with/are destined to marry.” And it was moderately interesting at the time for its sheer variety, and, in retrospect, for the insight that coverage gives to the way society thought about women, men, relationships, class, hierarchy, the lot. What Rusbridger called his “gallery of crumpet” were always described in terms of hair colour – usually “blond” but occasionally “flame-headed”. There were some weird formulations – “Tracie Lamb, an ex-college girl from Surrey” (you can tell she’s unsuitable, but is it the college or Surrey?), and some much more obvious ones: “model”, “former Miss UK”, “model and actress” …

“He particularly enjoyed the friendships of the model and actress Katie Rabett, the actress Finola Hughes and the model Clare Park because of the different worlds they opened up for him,” intoned the Daily Record, which as late as 1996 was still trying to imbue this coverage with respect, portraying the friendships as some kind of cultural safari for the curious mind. Generally speaking, by the time of his separation in 1992, that kind of sycophancy had ebbed away. As Mayer puts it, “he very quickly went from being a sort of bachelor prince to being somebody who has no use, no purpose, spends money too obviously, takes too many flights, gets his bad nickname, gets married, gets divorced. He went from being the golden prince to being the embarrassing uncle in a series of very inevitable steps. And that was before he became as embarrassing as he is now.”

Even during his heyday, there were multiple tensions to his role, his image and his self-fashioning. To have a shagger in the royal family was hardly a new thing, and the tabloids revelled in the rich history. This is from the Daily Record again: “His great-great-grandfather, Edward VII, for example, was one of the most celebrated playboys in Europe, dedicating his life to horse racing, yachting, carousing and – above all – mistress-bedding”. Prince Andrew’s very existence returned the troubled psyche to simpler times, when mistresses were hunted like stags – and, hey, maybe being bedded was a trace more empowered than being the other kind of royal female, who just gets to dress in a pie-crust collar and produce young.

Yet this was the 80s. So even though Prince Andrew’s relationship with the actor Koo Stark at the start of the decade was mainly a problem for the Queen, according to rumour (of particular concern was the film Cruel Passion, in which Stark's character gets raped by a peer and two grave diggers, and is savaged by alsatians), there was also an amount of feminist disquiet. I mean, nobody thought that every relationship ought to end in marriage, least of all an 80s feminist. But a relationship with a woman who, never mind a ring on her finger, would probably not be allowed round an aristo dining table … it looks a tiny bit like using her. As an understanding of women as equals gained ground as the normal way to look at the world, Prince Andrew was increasingly marginal to that.

He was redeemed in the mainstream by his stint as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands war, though that generated some stomach-churning brown-nosing: “His arrival on the scene has given a new meaning to the initials HRH. With Andrew, they stand for His Royal Heart-throb,” is a line biographer Andrew Morton must surely have paid for in self-respect. “Warrior prince” came up a lot, too. So for a while, Prince Andrew was just Classic Royal, maybe a wastrel and a gadabout in peacetime, but a standup guy in a war. And then in 1986 he married, and all the Queen’s qualms were soothed. For about one second.

The union with Sarah Ferguson was not an especially happy one – 10 years later, Ferguson joked that she passed the time renting videos while he frolicked with 27 concubines – but rich people’s unhappy marriages aren’t fundamentally more interesting than regular people’s. When they separated in 1992, their problems became more specific: it was the same year as Charles and Diana separated. Because Andrew and Fergie had always seemed like more of a joke couple, a bit more boisterous, a bit less dignified, and because of the lurid infidelities that surrounded the split (obviously, the toe-sucking stands out – if you’re too young to remember all this, I would strongly discourage Googling it), theirs seemed more like a comedy subplot to the main tragedy. Yet both divorces represented quite a serious crisis for the royal family. As Mayer explains: “The monarchy is smoke and mirrors. It exists, and there is a consensus, though a fraying one at this point, because it appears to have a unifying representation of the ideals and values of the nation. So when they started getting divorced, there was a sense that they were reflecting too accurate a portrait of who we really were.”

That is even more of a problem when your job is as amorphous as Prince Andrew’s was by 2001: no longer in the navy, he was a roving trade envoy, spreading the amorphous message that Britain was – God knows, as good as its word? Classy? For sure, his wasn’t a very feelgood life story; but he probably could have weathered these questions of constitutional purpose were he living a life of green wellies and speciality dogs. Instead, he was at the model Heidi Klum’s Halloween party in New York, where the theme was “kinky sex”, according to the Mail. From beaches in Thailand with “bikinied beauties” to “three-day flirtations with a Playboy pinup” in Los Angeles, there was a pictorial record of a man who has “trade ambassador” on his lapel, but doesn’t seem terrifically interested in the steel industry, put it that way. Ghislaine Maxwell was always tacitly blamed for introducing him to the “fast set” (he had met the daughter of the disgraced Robert Maxwell while she was at university); obviously, that was before we started blaming her for his friendship with Epstein.

Perhaps the problem was not so much that his behaviour didn’t befit his office, as that it didn’t befit his years. Really, this was no different from his life in the 80s – it just wore better on a man with a future ahead of him. Yet there was always this catastrophic carelessness, the myopia and indolence of intense privilege commingled with the weird self-pity he seems to have himself brought to the mix . He was known to be not very bright, but there is a distinctive flavour to the stupid things he says. Even without the Maitlis interview. Even if the questions go no deeper, the accusations against the prince himself are never substantiated, and the extent of his knowledge of the crimes of others never proved, Mayer says, “this much we absolutely know: that he stayed with a convicted child sex offender and he gave cover by doing so. This is how it works. These are the circles that close ranks precisely when they should be open.”

In the light of which, all that jollity, all that eye-rolling, all the indulgence of his early public life curdle. It’s such a thin line, isn’t it, between devil-may-care and sociopathy?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...bad-reputation

[Livia]

You could have edited all that down to: the tabloids told me.

[Twosugars]

Of course he never partied or had affairs.
Except for when he did of course.

[Livia]

Most people party and have sex, lots of people have affairs, that's not news. Like I said before, I'm awaiting this treatment for Harry in a few years. Nothing sells papers like salacious gossip.

[Kazanne]

Originally Posted by Livia

Most people party and have sex, lots of people have affairs, that's not news. Like I said before, I'm awaiting this treatment for Harry in a few years. Nothing sells papers like salacious gossip.

My thoughts exactly Livia, none of us know the truth,but people do surmise a lot

[Twosugars]

Folks nothing to see here. Andrew is not embroiled in any trouble.
The interview was just for fun

God forbid americans should him over to testify.
He's done nothing, seen nothing.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

Folks nothing to see here. Andrew is not embroiled in any trouble.
The interview was just for fun

God forbid americans should him over to testify.
He's done nothing, seen nothing.

This is a very strange way of debating. Almost childlike.

[parmnion]

He is a dirty old man..who thinks he's still 18.

Very sleazy...the whole thing just points to the power of the monarchy to cover things up.

It's almost like each birth, then that child's legacy is already mapped out for it.

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by Kazanne

My thoughts exactly Livia, none of us know the truth,but people do surmise a lot

Not you defending two adulterers in one day

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by Livia

This is a very strange way of debating. Almost childlike.

Theres nothing to debate. You said it's all salacious gossip

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by parmnion

He is a dirty old man..who thinks he's still 18.

Very sleazy...the whole thing just points to the power of the monarchy to cover things up.

It's almost like each birth, then that child's legacy is already mapped out for it.

Agree with that.

[Josy]

Originally Posted by Livia

This is a very strange way of debating. Almost childlike.

To be fair here Livia you came straight into the thread and tried to close all discussion down by rubbishing the OP, that's not a suitable way of posting or debating in this area of the forum.

[Twosugars]

Anyway, it is an interesting article giving an overview of Andrew's antics.

Considering all papers (not just tabloids) have him on their front pages it is very topical.

[Marsh.]

Pedo or not he's a raving narcissistic LIAR.

[Kizzy]

Bored of the Andrew threads tbh..
It was a sleazy time with sleazy people, why is it a surprise that the rich or royal cant be as sleazy as anyone else?

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Josy

To be fair here Livia you came straight into the thread and tried to close all discussion down by rubbishing the OP, that's not a suitable way of posting or debating in this area of the forum.

That's an odd phrase, closing down the discussion. It wasn't closed down at all, as you can see. But fair enough... so long as you're going to apply that rule with an even hand.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Bored of the Andrew threads tbh..
It was a sleazy time with sleazy people, why is it a surprise that the rich or royal cant be as sleazy as anyone else?

I think there's a difference between adult consenting sleaziness and fiddling kids.

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Josy

To be fair here Livia you came straight into the thread and tried to close all discussion down by rubbishing the OP, that's not a suitable way of posting or debating in this area of the forum.

To be fair Josy. .it seems to be the norm for threads in snd

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Bored of the Andrew threads tbh..
It was a sleazy time with sleazy people, why is it a surprise that the rich or royal cant be as sleazy as anyone else?

Perhaps wonder to yourself why jimmy Saville got an obe. ..why the host of its a royal.knock out did time.for kiddy fiddling....rolf Harris painting the queen..then think again before you belittle the **** the victims went through....

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by parmnion

Perhaps wonder to yourself why jimmy Saville got an obe. ..why the host of its a royal.knock out did time.for kiddy fiddling....rolf Harris painting the queen..then think again before you belittle the **** the victims went through....

Who's belittled anyone?... I've said it's no surprise to me that rich and royal are presumed to be above such things, they're not!! Maybe I didn't make myself clear.

[MB.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Most people party and have sex, lots of people have affairs, that's not news. Like I said before, I'm awaiting this treatment for Harry in a few years. Nothing sells papers like salacious gossip.

Most people haven't been best friends with prolific paedophiles who owned private sex crime islands

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Who's belittled anyone?... I've said it's no surprise to me that rich and royal are presumed to be above such things, they're not!! Maybe I didn't make myself clear.

Eh? The accusations are about PAEDOPHILIA! Goes above and beyond chastising him for enjoying sex and drugs.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Eh? The accusations are about PAEDOPHILIA! Goes above and beyond chastising him for enjoying sex and drugs.

What are you on about?... for the 3rd time and I'll try to be very clear.
I am struggling to understand why some can't get their head around these rich and royal men being sexual preditors... why is it so easy to believe for other people but the super rich and powerful are seen to be incapable of any deviance.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by MB.

Most people haven't been best friends with prolific paedophiles who owned private sex crime islands

So, guilt by association? That's quite a dangerous road to go down.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

What are you on about?... for the 3rd time and I'll try to be very clear.
I am struggling to understand why some can't get their head around these rich and royal men being sexual preditors... why is it so easy to believe for other people but the super rich and powerful are seen to be incapable of any deviance.

Because the way you worded it was "why do people expect royals or rich to be above sleaziness". Sleaziness can mean general sexual/party behaviour. Not outright child abuse. That's all.