Britain’s Prince Andrew sat down for an interview with the BBC on Saturday night.
It didn’t go so well. In fact, on Sunday morning, his public relations adviser quit.
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, appeared on the British TV show to talk about his relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide last month while being held in a Manhattan jail.
Prince Andrew palled around with Epstein for years, visiting his Manhattan penthouse, his Florida mansion, and his private island in the Caribbean. At one point, when the two were together in London, the prince was pictured with Virginia Roberts Guiffre, who claims that he had sex with her when she was just 17 years old.
Andrew has vehemently denied the pair ever had sex, but she has detailed the evening several times, including once in a lawsuit against Epstein.
In September, Guiffre said in an NBC interview that Prince Andrew was “pouring with perspiration” when they danced at a London club called Tramp in 2001. “He was a hideous dancer and he was sweating profusely all over me. I just remember like, ‘Ugh, I need a shower. This is disgusting.’ ”
During the BBC interview, interviewer Emily Maitlis asked the Prince about Guiffre’s account. “She described dancing with you… and you profusely sweating.”
Prince Andrew said that’s impossible, claiming that he had a medical condition at the time that made it so he did not sweat.
“There’s a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time. Yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at and I simply … it was almost impossible for me to sweat,” he said.
The prince served as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot during the 1982 Falklands War.
There is a disorder called anhydrosis in which a person exhibits diminished sweating.
Dr. Christopher Rowland Payne, of The London Clinic, told The Daily Mail that “a very stressful event may result in all sorts of different consequences.”
“The power of the subconscious brain is extremely strong. For example, there is the condition of psychogenic blindness that sometimes occurs in soldiers. In battle situations people can, of course, be extremely psychologically traumatised. It seems implausible that somebody should go blind in such circumstances but cases of blindness do occur with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So it is certainly possible to develop psychogenic anhydrosis,” he said.
Andrew said the condition was not permanent, saying that it was “only because I have done a number of things in the recent past that I am starting to be able to [sweat] again.”
The prince denied Guiffre’s account several dimes during the BBC interview.
“I have no recollection of ever meeting her. I’m convinced I was never in Tramps with her. There are a number of things wrong with her. I don’t know where the bar is in Tramps. I don’t drink. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a drink in Tramps whenever I was there,” he said.
“That couldn’t have happened because the date being suggested, I was at home with the children. On that particular day … I was at home. I was with the children. I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party … Going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do,” Prince Andrew said.
The prince also said a photograph of him with his arm around the 17-year-old Guiffre is suspect because he doesn’t hug.
“I’m terribly sorry, but if I, as a member of the royal family, and I have a photograph taken — and I take very, very few photographs — I am not one to, um, as it were, hug,” he said.
“Public displays of affection are not something that, that I do. So. That’s the best explanation I can give you,” he added.
The prince’s PR aide, Jason Stein, quit because of the interview, The Mail reported Sunday.