Boy, the Queen sure hated that TV interview.
Prince Andrew last week sat down for an interview with the BCC about his longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile whose death in prison in August was ruled a suicide.
It did not go well.
After the disastrous interview, Prince Andrew announced that he was stepping back from his official duties. Now, he’s been kicked out of his offices at Buckingham Palace.
Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, authorized her son’s eviction from the London palace in what is just “the latest humiliation for the beleaguered” Duke of York, The Times of London reported.
That puts Andrew out in the cold, with no official offices and no official duties.
“It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organisations and charities that I am proud to support,” Andrew said in a statement Wednesday.
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.
His claim was ridiculed in Britain, with several tabloids publishing pictures showing him sweating profusely.
Fallout was swift. The prince’s PR aide, Jason Stein, quit because of the interview, The Daily Mail reported Sunday.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra also announced that the group’s board had “decided that the Orchestra should part company with its” royal patron, Andrew, “with immediate effect.”
“A slew of other companies and institutions have severed ties with Andrew or his initiative on the heels of the interview including KPMG, Cisco, Standard Chartered, Huddersfield College, and the Melbourne Tech Institute, BT, Outward Bound Trust, London Metropolitan University and AstraZeneca,” CNBC reported.