Here is Prince Andrew, 7 months old, as bonny a baby as any proud parents could wish. There was this element of a fairy tale in 1960, principally because Andrew was the first child born to a reigning monarch in over 100 years. This young man, who is destined to be familiar with the camera all his life, is certainly isn’t camera-shy.
And a lovely smile. I think the Queen was just entranced by him. He was this beautiful, chubby, laughing baby. And of course, he became incredibly spoiled by everyone in the palace, not just his mother and father. Prince Andrew, five last February, probably feels quite senior now that he has a baby brother.
Nobody ever said no to him. He could do anything he wanted. And he did. As a baby, he wanted attention. As a child, he wanted attention. And as an adult, he wants attention. And he did use his royal status very much to protect himself. Pooh-pooh don’t say anything. That’s not the sort of thing that that that one should do.
Andrew has been an accident waiting to happen for most of his life. I’m not even going to answer that question. >> of us coined this name, His Buffoon Highness. He’s rude, he’s arrogant, and he’s entitled. But we didn’t know the depths of his depravity. These are the latest pictures of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew.
He was staying with Jeffrey Epstein. Convicted pedophile. We’ve got the picture. It was the first and only proof there was a friendship between Epstein and Prince Andrew. Bombshell arrest in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. >> Ex-Prince Andrew has been arrested. No one could possibly have known how the story was going to unwind.
The the bonny baby being presented to the adoring public in 1960 was to do immense damage to the reputation of Britain and the royals on the world stage. Each family often has a bad apple. This bad apple has been rotten for a long time. Good morning. Well, there’s been a very significant development in the investigation into the Epstein files, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have been arrested this morning on suspicion of misconduct in public life.
The files have been devastating for revealing the greed and the sort of entitlement that goes to the very heart of Andrew. Jeffrey Epstein was providing him with a never-ending cocktail list, it seems, of attractive, very presentable, young women. And on countless occasions, he was forwarding confidential British government information to Jeffrey Epstein, where Epstein would have been given some kind of financial advantage if he wanted to.
He was arrested by Thames Valley Police for misconduct in public office. It’s extremely rare. I mean, I’ve prosecuted several times involving police officers, prison officers, that kind of thing, but it’s a very rare charge. I wouldn’t want to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The penalty goes up to a maximum of life imprisonment.
It is as serious as homicide. And if you are guilty of these offenses, then you should go to prison. An arrest of this magnitude involving the sibling of a reigning monarch has no precedent in modern British history. Your Majesty, how are you feeling after your brother’s arrest? The last royal to be arrested was in 1647.
That is how significant it is. But it sends out a message that it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what your status is. You yourself will be held to account. I feel that Prince Andrew’s brought everything that has happened to him upon himself. So, I don’t feel sorry for him. I feel that he has to pay his penance.
The first time I met him was probably in Los Angeles on a royal tour. They’ll be in California for 9 days. It’s a full and tiring program of events based around a UK-Los Angeles Arts Festival. I wasn’t daunted by him. I certainly would be knowing what I know about him now, but I wasn’t daunted by him. So, I was quite sort of cheeky.
Then, on subsequent times that I’ve met him, he’s been very dismissive and rude, I have to say. If you go back in history, I think his fate was probably really set. He was absolutely adored by everyone. And of course, that paved the way for him getting even more of what he wanted. Because, you know, he could just demand it, and it happened.
>> A scaled-down version of the James Bond car for young Prince Andrew. Machine guns behind the side lights to put bullets in the butler, and a jolly effective smoke screen. Should produce some right royal coughing. He was the spare son. So, he was second to Prince Charles for 20 years. He was like number two.
So, I think that did have a big effect on him. I encountered Prince Andrew on many occasions during my years as a frontline royal reporter. And Andrew represented a sort of a special challenge, if you like. Royal correspondents knew that he was an absolute favorite of the late Queen Elizabeth.
Perhaps her favorite child of all. It gave him a sort of an arrogance in the way that he conducted himself, and certainly his interactions with the public and the media spoke very much of an of an arrogant man who didn’t brook much criticism and didn’t have really much time for anyone else’s opinion. The upper class or the people who the the the the the rich people in this country can learn a great deal from the less fortunate people.
And I think also that the less fortunate can learn something from from the upper class. >> He’s just very grand with people >> >> he considers his inferior. We would elect and so, when you agreed to design the set. There was a lot of stories about don’t you know who I am? And there was a great deal of talk at Buckingham Palace, what are we going to do with Andrew? Andrew joined the Royal Navy at 18.
He was the first of the Queen’s children to take a proper job, if you like. Prince Andrew’s rigging lines become twisted, but keeping his cool, young Andrew sorts out the problem in midair. Suddenly, he was going to have to think for himself. Could Andrew think for himself? And land safely. What would he think if he had to think for himself? These were all unanswered questions. They say again.
Off to another one now. He was a junior pilot on a Lynx, while I was a flight commander. And I’m afraid to say he was always the prince. And he saw himself as a prince before he was a naval officer. And all the characteristics that you look for in a naval officer, the dedication, the duty, the commitment, were always subordinated to his image of himself as being a prince, and what he was entitled to.
That’s my helicopter flying over the road. Must go. There’s a real story when the then Prince Andrew met somebody who was going to be his superior. He went over to the guy and said, “Oh, I I hear you’re going to be my superior.” And the guy said, “Yeah, that’s absolutely right.” And Andrew said to him, “Well, in that case, you can call me H.
” And the guy said, “But your name’s Andrew, why would I call you H?” He said, “Well, it’s short for HRH, His Royal Highness.” And the guy said, “That’s fine, H. You can call me sir.” Prince Andrew was on the same squadron as me, 820 squadron. Some people have slated him for being arrogant or offish. No. It’s all right.
He wasn’t a prince in the end, he was just a member of the crew. Simple as that. He couldn’t operate being a prince, being all princely. He was a pilot first and foremost. And then there was a a sort of pivotal moment when in 1982, Britain found itself at war with Argentina. Within the past hour, the Ministry of Defense announced important progress in the battle to recapture the Falklands.
Right and proper thing for for the Prime Minister to do is to say, should Prince Andrew go? Um and the answer from from here would have been quite simple. Well, of course he should go. So, Andrew found himself sent out on a aircraft carrier. He did have a very dangerous job. In those days, in order to draw away the very deadly Argentine missiles, so they sent up helicopters manned by people like Prince Andrew to act as decoys.
It was a situation that we knew we were not joking. All day, throughout the night, 24 hours a day for months on end, we were doing that. Carrots definitely held up on the on more than one occasion. He didn’t falter. He was steadfast. He did his job. He didn’t go to pieces. The only way I can describe it is that if you perhaps made a rather more risky overtake in a car then you get that sort of hot flush.
Well, double that, add 10, and then do it again. That’s how hot and sweaty it became inside my >> >> um immersion suit at that particular moment. >> >> When Andrew came back from the Falklands War and and I remember being there on the key at Portsmouth. His mother was there, his sister was there, and he sort of bounced down the gang plank and he had a rose clamped between his teeth, a red rose.
It was a huge huge national celebration of of relief, I think, but also of great pride. A lot of that pride was reserved for for the young Prince Andrew. The war certainly elevated his public image into the stratosphere because here we’ve got a gorgeous looking prince. He’s a hero because it was the Falklands War.
Would you accept an invitation from the prince? Ooh, would I? Yeah. And we all thought this is just magical. Very soon he was exploiting that um very good press that he had and soon he had a another nickname, if you like, that that the press gave him. This nickname? Honestly, which nickname? Randy Andy. Why Randy? Well, because Andrew seemed to have a lot of girlfriends.
You know, movie stars, television presenters, Andrew dated them all. It would appear that this newscast or many other newscasts would be incomplete without the latest on Britain’s Prince Andrew and his current girlfriend, film actress Koo Stark. I mean, of course, we had no idea of how Randy he was at the time.
No, thank you. I always thought that Andrew was just a bottom pincher. Very few people did realize that the depths that Andrew fell into. I think he had every opportunity to make a success of his life, but he failed. He failed his test and um it has done immense damage um to Britain as a consequence.
Prince Andrew, can I ask you to try to step back from your ambassadorial role for trade? >> >> The organizers of a sports display haven’t forgotten the prince’s reputation with the girls. Randy Andy has a practiced eye for the ladies and his romantic adventures have been well publicized. Everything changed for Prince Andrew that summer of 1985 when his brother’s wife, yes, we’re talking about Diana here, Princess Diana, decided to embark on a bit of matchmaking.
Andrew was at that stage without a girlfriend. Sarah Ferguson, age 26, upbringing impeccable, social connections excellent. Diana had this feeling that Sarah, known universally as Fergie, would get on well with Andrew. >> [laughter] >> Yes. The public loved the story of Andrew and Fergie. I remember writing, “She’s a breath of fresh air blowing through the dusty corridors of Buckingham Palace.
” Can you imagine writing anything like that? Anyhow, I did. Andrew, I want to do to I want to do I want to be good wife to you. There was a wonderful interview with them and I think they were sitting on a wall. Ah, I’ll just squeeze my fingers. Ah. Kiss him then. Why don’t I kiss you? Don’t hurry up. Hello. They’re moving quick.
>> [laughter] >> Go on. Dare you. You’re a monster. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. This was a couple who you felt wanted to rip each other’s clothes off and get into bed as quickly as possible. So, there was something very wholesome and warming about the pair um that went down very well with the public.
And out into the sunshine they stepped to face those crowds for the first time as the Duke and Duchess of York. The wedding of Andrew and Fergie was absolutely huge. There was so much excitement. And there was so many crowds and people had come from all over the world. And this was what the crowd was waiting [cheering] for. It was perfect.
Absolutely perfect. >> [applause and music] >> She then got pregnant very quickly, of course, had two children within four years of marriage. But by then it was quite clear that something was not quite right. They appeared to be in love with each other, yet very rapidly they began to be be not in love with each other.
Andrew was away at sea a lot, but I didn’t clock that there was anything wrong with the marriage until I started writing my book with Fergie and she then told me that they’d had so few days together that she was basically like a widow because she was left to fend for herself and everything was new for her. I mean, Andrew was only on a naval pay and Fergie wasn’t earning any money at all, so the debt started to build up, but they were living like millionaires.
And I think that’s was the root of the trouble. The Duchess of York, ready for the slopes, emerged from her chalet here at Bidmorning to talk for the first time about the divorce. I’m feeling it. Very well, thank you. So, fast forward to 1996 and the marriage ends in divorce. How do you see your future after the divorce? Take every day as it comes.
Every day is a new day. But they have a very curious kind of divorce. They don’t totally separate in the way that most divorced couples do. They were the happiest divorced couple in the world. Sarah was living at Royal Lodge because it suited them both. She had her part of the house and he had his part of the house.
Then sometime around the late 1990s, Andrew, I guess with his 40th birthday looming, he he he began to change. It’s been a wonderful life and I’ve I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but I’ve got new things to do and new challenges to face. When he reached the rank of commander, uh that was pretty much as high he was going to go.
He was not going to make captain and I think that led to a sort of a a big debate around Andrew within the royal family, but also for Andrew himself about what on earth was he going to do next. Prince Andrew will now take up a position promoting British trade around the world. While his new job carries no salary, it’s all expenses paid.
>> >> Prince Charles, his older brother, was very much against Prince Andrew securing this a plum role as trade envoy in 2001. He thought that Andrew would exploit the position to pick up girls and play golf. And and you know, he wasn’t a million miles wrong. Anybody who spent any time around Andrew would know that he’s capable of an extreme lack of diplomacy and given that that job really consisted of a kind of trade diplomacy, it’s still pretty extraordinary that he got it and that people thought that it
was a good idea. As far as I am aware, I am the only journalist ever to accompany the then Prince Andrew on one of his missions and to be inside the bubble. It’s [snorts] a no-brainer to come to an event like this. He was always a loose cannon. He was always going to say the first thing that came into his head and the first thing that came into his head was very often going to be ridiculous.
We can all squeeze in the lift. With the police. One policeman. And the sound man. Yeah. No more. This is going to be fun. And yet they sent him bumbling around the world for Britain. We keep up a reasonably firm pace because there’s so much to do. There are so many opportunities. My interactions with Prince Andrew were mainly in Bahrain when I was the Deputy Ambassador at the British Embassy in Bahrain.
Most of us in the Foreign Office at that stage when he was appointed uh we’re really pleased that uh he was in this position. But things started to go wrong from the word go. His role was actually quite simple. It’s shaking hands, banging the drum, and smiling. And yet he seemed to do the opposite most of the time.
He would not stay with the ambassador at the residence, which of course is free. He wanted to stay in the best hotel on the island. Plus, he was bringing a much larger entourage than we had anticipated. He was bringing not only a private secretary, but an equerry. He was bringing two lady clerks whose sole responsibility was to write thank you letters.
And there was this chap called the valet who was carrying a 6-ft ironing board. And I said to the valet, “Why on earth are you bringing this ironing board? Is this normal?” He said, “Yes, I carry it everywhere cuz I’m the only person that knows how to how to iron His Royal Highness’s trousers.” So, this sort of arrogance and and entitlement was just shocking.
And that’s why a few of us coined this name, His Buffoon Highness, to describe his visits. One thing that was noticeable, which I didn’t encounter with any other visit of a royal family, was that his staff seemed to be petrified of him. From 1998 to 2004, uh my role was armed protection, um covering the palace and the royals for 24 hours a day.
Protection officers go everywhere with Prince Andrew, as they do with most senior royals. It’s important that people understand who Prince Andrew is. He’s a very unpleasant person. He could fly off the handle at the smallest thing. Um he would be abusive. He would shout. He would swear. His official code was purple 41.
But he did have a nickname. He was called the [ __ ] Um plain and simple, cuz unfortunately, uh upset everyone he come across. Uh he was the most unpopular member of the royal family. He had plenty of other names, but I won’t repeat them on on television. I’ve seen him described as a useful idiot. Nice to see you.
>> >> Nice to see you. Nice to see I was with him on his first China trip in 2004. And I have to say on that trip, I was already questioning the first part of that praise. One day he said to me that he wished he could have been a plumber and fixed things. And I remember thinking at the time, ain’t that the truth about the royal predicament? He probably would have been a good plumber.
You know, instead he’s gone and broken all the delicate pipework there. I actually saw him as a figure of fun for a long period of time without really taking seriously enough what it means to have a figure of fun um >> >> living at the heart of an institution that has so much significance and um what that could mean.
The problem is there was no real accountability for his behavior. And then there were other aspects of his visits, which we weren’t sure what was going on. I’ve seen relationships he had not only with Jeffrey Epstein, but with all sorts of other people who raised extraordinary questions about his judgment. >> regret the whole friendship with Epstein? So, I’m I Now? I I’m still not.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome back His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, in his capacity as the United Kingdom’s special representative for international trade and investment. >> [applause] >> We knew very little about what Andrew was doing in his role as a UK trade envoy, because he went sort of below the parapet.
I started in Germany last week. I then had to go to Doha to give a speech. I then went to Abu Dhabi before going to Iraq. Back in those early 2000s, Andrew relished getting on an airplane and going anywhere. I’m following them. I’m going to where they’re going. >> [laughter] >> There was no salary as the unofficial trade envoy for the UK, but there were expenses, and he could load his expenses, and he did. That’s my job.
Nothing was too grand for our Prince Andrew, and he run up huge bills, which the taxpayer were having to pay. Uh usually, uh it involved a golf course or a yacht or a nice hotel somewhere. He’s become known as Air Miles Andy. This private jet is taking the Duke of York to Newcastle. Did you have to go by private jet? >> Yeah, because there was no other way of getting there and back, bearing in mind from what I was doing before and what I was doing afterwards.
He was always traveling, so we didn’t really see a great deal of him. You know, he he would appear at events with with very exotic-looking women. The next thing you know, it would be a photograph of him cavorting on a yacht. You know, then he’d be doing some business deals with the Middle East. The whole thing about royal life is they have this lifestyle that is very circumscribed and where, although they look fabulously wealthy and comfortable by most of our standards, they really don’t have
a lot of money by what they consider their own standards. So, they are constantly looking for ways to increase their own personal wealth and income. There were questions about the sale of that appalling house that he and Sarah Ferguson lived in, Sunninghill Park. The sprawling mansion that the Queen had given him on his marriage to Sarah Ferguson.
And it’d been up for sale for a while for 10 or 12 million pounds and uh hadn’t moved. >> It ended up being sold way above its market value to the son of the Kazakhstan dictator. The first thing anyone would do if you got money coming in from Kazakhstan or whatever would be a load of red flags, but these would just seem to be nodded through.
The yearning to have a great deal of money. I think that is the problem. Andrew wanted money, Fergie wanted money, and when she got caught by the fake sheikh, it was gut-wrenchingly embarrassing. The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, has been secretly filmed allegedly plotting to introduce a News of the World reporter posing as businessman to her former husband, Prince Andrew.
She was offering access to her ex-husband uh for money. 500,000 uh pounds when you come to me. Open doors. Meet Prince Andrew. Yeah. Is that a deal? >> >> Yeah. She said in the interview, “We can open any door you need.” You have to query now what we know about all the financial shenanigans within Andrew’s orbit.
You have to consider whether there may have been some truth in payment for access. And then he did have a female business advisor who came to all the meetings, but never said a thing. And we didn’t know what her role was, what she was supposed to do, but she attended all the royal events. Maybe she was advising him on on business opportunities.
I don’t know. We never found out. People did know that he was out of control. But he wasn’t reined in. This was the problem. I described him once as as a hot air balloon. It was because he he he he had this appearance of sort of drifting around with no visible means of support. And by visible means of support, where was all the money coming from? Because he lived a fairly lavish lifestyle.
He was spending a lot of time with very rich people. >> >> I remember going out to New York in 1999, because reports were coming out of the United States that Andrew had formed an attachment with Ghislaine Maxwell. She was the daughter of the disgraced former press tycoon, Robert Maxwell. Well, I think probably what attracted him to Ghislaine is she was someone that could take him with her into the high life, >> >> and he didn’t have to organize anything.
See, I think Andrew’s also very lazy. And he’s always had everything done for him. So, suddenly, here’s another person that’s going to do everything for him. She’s going to organize for him to have fun and meet lots of rich, influential people. I don’t think she was actually dating him as as the reports had it at the time, but nevertheless, she was the person who was to usher in a new set of friends, a new set of acquaintances, and some of them were going to turn out to be very dangerous ones for Prince
Andrew. Around the turn of the century, >> >> we know that he has made friends with this man called Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein is an anonymous figure in New York. I mean, in fact, it was many, many years before anyone really knew much about this sort of Zelig-like creature that he was. >> >> I think Andrew would have been an easy mark for anybody who was able to wine and dine and treat him to the things that he enjoyed, the company of young women and the use of posh houses, posh cars, private planes.
He was completely taken in by Epstein, because there was the money, the yachts, the parties, the business deals, all given to him a plate. I think that Epstein groomed him. Access was what Epstein wanted because members of the royal family can open all sorts of doors and just by the fact that they are members of the royal family.
>> >> Jeffrey Epstein had his eye on the main chance. I think he was looking for Andrew to open up all sorts of riches for him. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor appears to have knowingly shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein when as Prince Andrew he was a UK trade envoy. I was like everybody absolutely shocked to see in the Epstein files that Prince Andrew had been forwarding government documents to Epstein.
>> >> Emails show Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor apparently passing on details of investment opportunities. He forwarded details about his trade visits to Southeast Asia, Vietnam and China. He forwarded details about the British government response to the global financial crisis in 2008-9. And the these are highly questionable activities.
>> >> The allegation here is that Andrew asked for a certain document. He gets that document and within seconds he’s forwarding it on to Epstein. Um it I mean it beggars belief. Among the people that Andrew was asked to help Jeffrey Epstein get close to was the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi.
Back in the early 2000s uh Epstein saw Andrew as a very useful way of getting to Gaddafi who was thought to have many billions of ill-gotten gains in offshore bank accounts. And um there’s this extraordinary exchange which shows how uh Epstein asked him for his help. People have asked me if I want to meet him as he does not know where to put his money.
I wondered if Prince Andrew should make the intro. And Andrew said he would see his Libyan man and he duly responds. Only hours later Libya fixed. There is no doubt in my mind that there can only be one explanation for that which is what which is to give financial benefit to Epstein or anybody around Epstein at that time.
There was an enormous amount of money flowing in and out of Libya. Um it suggests somebody that’s um allegedly systemically breaching uh the responsibilities placed upon him. What the prosecutors and police will have to prove is that he was doing more than just being a ceremonial trade envoy. That he was actually uh making decisions.
That he was um acting in such a way that uh that would make him a public officer. But people shouldn’t be just fixated on the misconduct. There are other potential crimes here. Breaking news out of Washington, the Justice Department just dropped a trove of new documents. The latest release of files is shocking in its size and its content.
These are the latest pictures of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. The Epstein files have been devastating for revealing seedy billionaires’ entitlement and greed and rather unscrupulous goings-on. Documents in the Epstein files appear to show that Andrew was using the disgraced financier as a go-between to fix high-level meetings.
The suggestion they both wanted to cash in. Andrew was very easily hooked by Epstein. He was completely taken in and the only person that really noticed was Prince Philip. Wise Prince Philip. He said to his son, “Beware of seedy billionaires because all they want is to be linked to a prince and they’re going to use you.
” And Andrew wasn’t intelligent enough to realize, you know, how evil it all was. I don’t think he actually thought about it. He just thought, “Oh, this is jolly good fun.” And didn’t think about it. He actually didn’t take on board that this was a man who who’d been jailed for defiling young girls. I was in New York when Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested for many many charges of child prostitution.
I’m a freelance journalist and I was like crikey. That is Ghislaine Maxwell’s boyfriend. So obviously I then looked into that and covered that and it was like this is astonishing. Ultimately he just did a sweetheart deal with the Florida prosecutors and served just 13 months in prison and he was allowed out in the daytime.
So very much at that point Jeffrey Epstein was on my radar. In December 2010 I got a phone call from the News of the World saying, “Panic. We we know Prince Andrew’s in town. He’s not working. We don’t know what he’s doing and we don’t know where he is. >> >> Can you try and find him?” I thought that he might be staying with Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein owns the biggest private residence, I think it’s 52 rooms, in Manhattan. It’s massive. But I also thought he wouldn’t be stupid enough to actually go and stay with Jeffrey Epstein considering he’s just come out of prison, you know, for basically paid affiliate. As I approached Epstein’s place, yes, there was the diplomatic protection squad.
I was called the men talking into their cufflinks. What I knew was that somebody rather important was inside Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. So I called up the photographer Jay Donnelly. We sat outside in the freezing cold in the car. On day one we didn’t see any signs of Andrew. But there was an awful lot of girls going in and out. And these girls were very very young.
One girl then flown in on literally from the airport from Russia. Um you could see even like the Aeroflot um plane ticket on her luggage. I was like, “What is going on?” Next day Jay and I are back again. Suddenly the front door opened and out came Andrew with Jeffrey Epstein. It was like woof.
It was it was so quick. Sort of took off in the car. Within seconds we hit Central Park and they turned right which was against the traffic. So Jay the photographer just ran out with his camera equipment, ran into the park. Being a brilliant photographer he managed to get ahead of them, clamber up a rock and take the most amazing set of photographs.
It was incredible. I mean at the time it was like, “We’ve got the picture. It’s fantastic.” I remember him showing me the pictures and I didn’t want to have my fingers anywhere near them for fear of deleting on the camera. I could have written the headline there, you know, the prince and the pervert. And it was like, “God, this is it.
How could Andrew be so stupid?” It was the first and only proof at that point we had that there was a friendship between Jeffrey Epstein, you know, convicted pedophile and Prince Andrew. Now, if not for that picture he would have carried on denying denying denying any sort of friendship. It’s an incredibly important picture and it was like the house of cards falling down.
That is the moment I think that December day in 2010 you can kind of plot his downfall and what has subsequently happened to him over the next 16 years springs from that paparazzi photograph. What do you think when you see that photo? I think it’s two maniacal individuals who >> [snorts] >> help each other get what they want.
They both think that they can get away with everything. Um that they’re above society. With that picture Virginia Roberts Giuffre said, “Right, that’s it. I’m talking. I always said I would never talk. I cannot stand the idea that Jeffrey Epstein is trying to rehabilitate himself by being seen with British royalty.
” >> >> So she told her story. I was trafficked to Prince Andrew. How many times were you trafficked to him? Three times. This is a real photo. And that was the first time you met him? And that’s the very first time I met him. Virginia said, you know, “I was forced to sleep with Andrew in London, in New York and obviously in the Caribbean where Jeffrey Epstein owns an island.
” The Duke of York has been named in court papers filed in the United States by Virginia Roberts. What do you make of Prince Andrew’s denial? He knows what he’s done and he can attest to that. >> Prince Andrew, are you resigning? Do you remember her? No. I I I have no recollection of ever meeting her.
And then of course, you know, 2019 I’m back in London and Andrew gives the car crash interview to Emily Maitlis which I sat and watched. And it was like I had my fist in my mouth. I was like what is he saying? She described dancing with you No. and you profusely sweating and that she went on to have possibly There’s a slight problem with with with with with the sweating um because uh I I I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat.
My whole position had been I’m just asking the questions. My job is to ask the questions on behalf of the women who desperately need answers. I was on terminal leave at the time from the the Royal Navy so therefore I was at home. Why would you remember that so specifically? Why would you remember a a Pizza Express birthday and being at home? Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do.
I guess I just saw the holes, you know, the fabric was just kind of coming apart. Do you regret that trip? Yes. Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein? Sad. I’m Now I’m still not that His most extraordinary answer in that interview was Emily asked him did he regret his association with Epstein and he said still not was the first two words still not because of the wonderfully useful links that Epstein brought him.
The people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful. It was disastrous. We know it was completely disastrous. We just said this man is complete idiot. Well, just days after giving what has been described as a car crash interview, the prince says that he would be stepping down from royal duties for the foreseeable future.
It meant that Prince Andrew’s actions had started to damage the monarchy. The Newsnight disaster more than anything else he has ever done showed you who Andrew was. It happened because he is so arrogant that he thought he could sit there and say these things and not be challenged on them and not have it unravel later.
His Majesty the King has today initiated a formal process >> >> to remove the style, titles and honors. He will no longer be known as Prince Andrew. Instead, he will only be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. This is full disgrace and pretty much unprecedented. No one could possibly have known how the story was going to unwind not for him, not for the House of Windsor not indeed for the world at large.
The damage has been done. There are countries around the world that I imagine even Australia who you know think you know is the royal family fit for purpose. Andrew is most certainly a symbol in this whole saga that no one including the brother of a king is above the law. When the reputational and now potentially criminal last radius of the Epstein investigation reaches the monarchy, it is a global news event.
The biggest crisis for the royal family since the death of Diana. Good afternoon, Your Majesty. Do you have any reactions to the arrest of your brother, sir? Your Majesty, how are you feeling? Everywhere King Charles goes, people shout out questions about how much did you know and when did you know it? How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein? Your Royal Highness, can I ask you your and your Can I brother’s position? Prince Andrew How do you think the King has handled the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor situation? I think he’s handled it
fairly fairly. No, I don’t think he’s he’s handling it very well. Most of us have a black sheep of the family in in every family and that’s all Andrew is, the black sheep, isn’t it? I feel that we still don’t know the significance of Andrew’s arrest. Honestly, really pleased. I think it’s about time.
an important signal that it’s a taken very seriously. The royal family are obviously very distressed by it because he lied to them. They believed him. So they must feel foolish as well. Sir, to what extent do you think the royal family has done enough around the Andrew and Epstein issue? When the Virginia Giuffre photograph emerged in 2011, I think within the royal family there was a feeling we got to protect Andrew.
He’s told us it’s entirely innocent. Giuffre has long said she wanted her day in court to face the man she claimed sexually abused her more than two decades ago when she was 17. From the moment that picture appeared, it has haunted the House of Windsor and it it has haunted Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre, the woman who’d accused him of sexual assault have reached an out-of-court settlement.
Andrew denied this for years but reached a settlement in 2022 with Giuffre in New York paying somebody off in this case 12 million pounds might sound like compensation but it wasn’t compensation. It was done with a disclosure non-disclosure agreement. It was done to buy her silence. That has caused people to look at the monarchy in a very different way and I genuinely think that it could now come to an end in my lifetime but even if it doesn’t, it will never have that automatic expectation of respect and property that
it has enjoyed for much of the time that I’ve reported on it. >> >> When the Queen was alive, I never would have said the monarchy was vulnerable. More and more people want to get rid of the monarchy. Their days are numbered. I think that King Charles has done a magnificent job but I think he’s had an incredibly hard time.
The King realized that this was existential for the royal family. That people were openly questioning the existence of a royal family. So the King needed as he has done to show how seriously he was taking this. Breaking news, His Majesty the King has released a statement saying the following.
Let me state clearly, the law must take its course. As part of the investigation, the police will have to talk to witnesses including the close protection officers, people who are involved in security, people involved in looking after diary, people who were involved in receiving phone calls. Everybody will have to be spoken to. And the Historically, the palace ecosystem has been extremely sec- secretive.
Um you know, what the public don’t know, they don’t need to know, you know? But actually now they’re going to have to open up. This is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the present day stripped of his titles and roles after revelations of his past dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is understood to have moved from his Windsor mansion to the Sandringham estate.
So all times when I feel sorry for Andrew and I know that Princess Anne and Prince Edward certainly are concerned for his mental health. Um the police actually went to um his new digs >> >> and actually removed some firearms. So somebody there is concerned about him. But then I have to remind myself what’s about the girls.
Virginia Giuffre died. She couldn’t take anymore. That woman was so brave and if only she could look back and see this. So yes, I have to remind myself no. There are a lot of victims of sexual abuse here and you know, Prince Andrew caused a lot of that misery. I’ve been calling for investigation in relation to Andrew and Epstein and the sexual misconduct allegations for about 10 years now and the initial view of the Metropolitan Police which is the police for London was that there was insufficient evidence for them to to
even investigate. Now, however, suddenly he’s in the public eye and when people are now looking at all other areas of criminality, they’re looking at this. I’ve said it publicly, when the government is an alleged victim, the state moves at pace. When a woman is an alleged victim, state’s extremely slow. My sense is that we’re we’re at the beginning of something not not near the end.
Here was a man who was going to have some kind of dramatic reckoning. He was going to unravel with dizzying speed and that’s where I think our anger should be directed. Our anger should be directed at Andrew. What he was doing was something that was morally reprehensible and he’s done irreparable damage to his country, to his own family and to the institution of monarchy that he pledged to serve.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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