Can the Andrew File Get Any Worse?
It’s thanks to Andrew Lownie’s paperback update of Entitled, his Prince Andrew defenestration, that we now know that Sarah Ferguson—aside from her toxic association with Jeffrey Epstein—reportedly had regular sex trysts with baby-oil extortionist P. Diddy (which she denies). What’s left for Lownie’s third edition? Freak-offs at the Beirut Hilton with Bashar al-Assad?
Lownie has the sensationalizer’s gift for creating an unrelenting continuum of moral disgust, whether it’s Fergie’s ordering the chef to make a “sizeable cream cake” every day (then blithely binning it) or Andrew’s alleged chat-up line in his youth: ‘What’s it like to have a royal cock rub up against your leg?’ These details of minor awfulness accrete into something much worse than the acting out of a couple of social grotesques who inhabit the seedy second division of royal life.
The grifting, the greed, the complete absence of self-discipline made them easy marks for a practiced reprobate like Jeffrey Epstein. They have come to symbolize a rot at the heart of the whole royal system, in which the monarchy’s “aura” allows its members absolute impunity. Status sickness doesn’t just apply to the enablers of Epstein. Who in their right mind would hire a garrulous, freeloading shopaholic like Sarah Ferguson to be “brand ambassador” to grow their business unless they thought that the murkiest royal aura was better than none? I am not in the camp that believes the two gushing York daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, should be welcome in the cleaned-up Royal ensemble. Floating around the UAE and Saudi Arabia as “cultural ambassadors” to the Middle East sounds horribly Fergie-like to me. Most of the “convenings” they attend are hustle bazaars for nepo nightmares and crypto creeps hoovering around for the crumbs of sovereign wealth funds. One wonders why they allegedly rejected Prince William’s request to audit their business activities to ensure there are no reputational risks.
High-Low Jinks
What finally got Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested in February was his apparent casual sharing of confidential government information that his pedophile friend Epstein might instantly monetize. He is now being investigated for “suspicion of misconduct in public office.” Suspicion? How many years have we known that, as UK trade envoy, Andrew was the bane of the Foreign Office, running around the world with his rampant scepter, telling toilet jokes and, according to former civil servants, spending taxpayer money on additional hotel rooms for cavorting ‘masseuses’? There is also new Lownie-inspired uproar that Andrew could have been the useful idiot of Russian espionage operations. David Percival, director of Inward Investment in China, who encountered Andrew on a visit to World Expo in 2010, told Lownie, “The Foreign Office almost came to a revolution over him.”
Except it didn’t because they knew he was protected by Queen Elizabeth, and Andrew, fabled fool that he was, still had the trappings, the perks, the “aura” of Her Majesty’s second son. Deep down, I am told by an old family friend, Andrew always believed he would be the monarch himself. Three of the last four kings of England had previously been Dukes of York, ascending to the throne on their elder brother’s death or—in the case of George VI—abdication.
A friend from Andrew’s early twenties told me it wasn’t just the Queen’s favoritism that was responsible for the prince’s farcically warped view of his own minimal abilities. As much to blame was the press adoration of him “as a war hero” after his extended ten minutes of fame serving as a Sea King helicopter co-pilot in the Royal Navy in the Falklands War, a military operation that was almost as absurd in its expression of overblown patriotism as Andrew was himself. The sight of all the jingoistic newspaper accolades spread out on the breakfast table at Balmoral apparently “went to Andrew’s head. He reveled in the adulation for years.” The former friend of his youth marveled to me at the license afforded Andrew in his twenties. “He was allowed to have a helicopter whenever he wanted. It would be revving up whenever he wanted to play golf at St. Andrews.” He said Andrew was always obsessed with girls and cited his desperate pursuit of a good-looking actress who wasn’t “putting out.” Gazing out across the lawn at one of the royal homes, the friend saw the then-twentysomething prince on his hands and knees before her, picking up a croquet mallet with his mouth like a dog.
It’s a Dog’s Life
Is it possible that the young Andrew today would have been diagnosed with the multiple mental health acronyms that are medicated by the nurse’s office in elite private schools across the country—ADHD, ADD, ASD, CBSD (compulsive sexual behavior disorder)? He seems to have had all of them. Queen Elizabeth considered any kind of mental or physical health challenge an unfortunate weakness but perhaps a keen private belief that Andrew did not play with a full deck might explain why Prince Philip, a Teutonic tyrant at the best of times, on two known occasions is said to have apologized for Andrew’s outrageous conduct. Lownie describes an incident at Sandringham when a friend reports he expressed outrage at the way Andrew viciously kicked his Labrador in the head for stealing a sausage roll, to which Andrew retorted, “‘Piss off. It is none of your business and I will do precisely what I want to MY dogs.’” Prince Philip later told the guest that he was absolutely right to protest: “Andrew needs a good scolding from time to time.” (Scolding. Such a schoolboy word. And I find it baffling that when the Queen died, she left Fergie, then still living at Royal Lodge with the dog-abusing Andrew, custody of her beloved corgis.)
The second occasion was when Andrew blew up at the ever-courteous Master of the Household, Vice Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt, a figure so beloved by the senior royals he was one of the few in their 2020 Covid bubble at Windsor Castle. According to Elizabeth biographer Robert Hardman, the row turned into a physical altercation. The behavior was so alarming that it stirred Prince Philip from his retirement to write a letter apologizing to the Vice Admiral on Andrew’s behalf that prompted a ‘sorry, not sorry’ apology from his younger son. The Queen, when she learned of it, was unfazed. “‘Oh, I’m sure he did it,’ she replied. ‘That's the sort of thing he does.’” It’s worth noting here the difference in reaction to Meghan Markle’s behavior to Palace staff that earned her a notorious “bullying complaint” from the Sussexes’ former communications secretary Jason Knauf. On this occasion, Meghan and Harry’s claims of a dual standard was justified. Andrew was so hated by his (uncomplaining) staff that his security code name was “the C..t.”
Scot Free
Lownie’s fresh deluge of reminders of Andrew’s baseness has dampened the initial national jubilation at his February arrest. On first blush—amplified by the shell-shocked, now iconic picture of the ripped-of-all-privileges Andrew cowering in the back of a Range Rover—it seemed that the froideur of the King’s announcement that the law would take its course meant a Royal Reckoning had arrived at last. But now it feels that “misconduct in public office” is a hard-to-prove understatement of a charge that could somehow slip away, and, as in the U.S. with the noxious seepage from the Epstein files, it leaves unrectified the decades of Andrew’s sordid exploitation of women. Lownie’s book suggests we only know the tip of the iceberg. In 2004, a female British Airways crew member extended her hand to Andrew as he boarded the First Class cabin. John Longmuir, an armed police officer at Heathrow Airport whose duties included escorting VIPs through airside and onto the aircraft alleged to Lownie, “he took it, pulled her towards him, spun her round so she had her back to him and then ‘bent her forward so that his groin was clearly and firmly in contact with her backside ... I would judge the prince’s actions to amount to a possible sexual assault but there was no way that the Met Police or British Airways would have gone down that road at that time.’” Bring it on.
Former Labor PM Gordon Brown has been leading a thundering campaign in the New Statesman magazine demanding the Met’s prosecutorial focus widens to include Andrew’s supposed abuse of women. “The British authorities” he wrote, “should re-interview Andrew, not just over possible breaches of the Official Secrets Act, but over his use of public funds, and especially over incidents in which women allegedly brought to him at Sandringham, Buckingham Palace, Windsor and other locations, may have been trafficked into the country by Epstein.”
Meanwhile, there’s always Abu Dhabi.
I love it when writing SIZZLES, Tina! And you do it better than anyone on Substack.
Your writing is sooooo fabulous and to the point. Keep the stories coming and hopefully some serious charges will come.