Prince Andrew's threadbare defence was an unmitigated disaster

On Christmas Day 1932, after 10 years of pleading from the British Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s King George V was finally persuaded to become that country’s first monarch to deliver a speech live on radio.

He could have had no idea that the snowball he set in motion would one day grow into an avalanche big enough to bury Buckingham Palace.

In 1957, Queen Elizabeth II gave the gathering landslide extra momentum when she invited a BBC team into her holiday home for the first televised broadcast of her Christmas speech.

Like her grandfather George V, the queen had expressed extreme reluctance about the vulgar notion of a live media appearance. Like George, she was outmanoeuvred by a royalty-hungry public and a posse of pushy advisers.

Both George and Elizabeth had help with their speeches. George’s was written by Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling and Elizabeth sought advice from author Daphne du Maurier, though the final draft of the queen’s speech was completed by her husband, Prince Philip.

In later years some might have questioned the wisdom of letting the faux-pas-prone Duke of Edinburgh loose on a public address, but all Philip’s errors of verbal judgment added together do not come close to the gigantic cauldron of steaming ordure tipped over the House of Windsor this week by Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, Duke of York, middle and apparently favourite son of the queen and eighth in line to the throne.

It is not the first time the former Royal Navy helicopter pilot, fondly nicknamed “Randy Andy” by the gutter press for his string of leggy lady friends in the 1980s (later “Airmiles Andy” for his lavish spending of taxpayers’ money), has embarrassed his mother.

In 1992, the year Elizabeth gave her “annus horribilis” speech, three of her four children had let the firm down — Anne by divorcing Mark Phillips and Charles by separating from Diana.

Meanwhile, the sordid details of Andy’s failed marriage were making tabloid headlines. When the queen opened her newspapers at the breakfast table she was confronted by photographs of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, lying topless on a lounger in Saint-Tropez while her “business adviser”, American John Bryan, sucked her toes. The queen was not amused.

Until now, that has been about the most shocking scandal to hit the royal family since American divorcée Wallis Simpson got Edward VIII to abdicate in 1936 (putting Elizabeth’s father, George VI, on the throne).

But Andy utterly eclipsed both his great-uncle’s lack of patriotism and his ex-wife’s lack of taste with his agonising performance on Newsnight last week, in an interview in which he fumbled and stumbled when questioned about his “ill-judged” but nevertheless longstanding friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in a US prison in August while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

On-screen Andy made pathetic excuses for his lack of judgment, invoked bizarre medical conditions and unlikely visits to pizza parlours in an attempt to distance himself from accusations of non-consensual sex with a teenage girl — and, worst of all, voiced no sympathy for Epstein’s many young victims.

Since the broadcast, most of the companies and charitable causes which used to proudly display the prince’s name as royal patron have struck him from their letterheads and expunged him from their logos.

There might also be financial consequences for the profligate prince, but it probably hurt his ego more to have to step down from his royal duties.

According to some news reports, Mummy summoned him and ordered him forthwith to clear his desk.

In his announcement on Wednesday, Andy put a somewhat different spin on things. “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,” he said in a statement issued by Buckingham Palace.

“Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I may step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission.”

No matter who made the decision, Andy will not be making guest appearances at parades and pantomimes for the foreseeable future. 

Which means we are unlikely to see a repeat of the headline-grabbing incident that occurred in SA less than a year after his royal tour to New York (one of the trips during which Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, then 17, alleges she was forced to have sex with the prince).

In February 2002, Andrew visited Eastgate Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Johannesburg to officially unveil “the world’s largest candle”.

This record-breaking edifice was constructed out of wax bricks, one of which was autographed by the prince, to raise funds for the South African Abused Children’s Fund.

Whether or not any case against Andrew goes to trial, and whether or not he was guilty of having sex with a teenage girl procured for him by his dodgy buddy Epstein, his decision to go on TV with his scabrous defence was an unmitigated disaster.

If George V could have foreseen the chain reaction triggered by his unwilling compliance with the press 87 years ago, I bet he’d have stayed well away from the microphones. And I bet his great-grandson wishes he’d done likewise — or at least that he’d hired a competent writer to prepare his script.