With the news that there are now 7 police forces investigating Andrew, it is essential that they speak to everyone who was involved in arranging his life because, if he is guilty of any of the crimes that he is accused of, it’s quite possible he was aided and abetted by his staff.
As I wrote in Entitled, Andrew’s staff requested attractive blondes for an official event before being told by an official that he was a ‘diplomat not a pimp’, and this was just one example of lines that were regularly crossed by those who worked for him.
Similarly, the police need to talk to David Stern, because he is emerging as a key middleman between Epstein and Andrew, and one who seems to have been involved in the sexual side as much as the business side.
Indeed, he sent a photo of Andrew sat with a model to Epstein with the words “we are having dinner on Sunday with this p”. “p” stands for a derogatory term for women. Stern called Epstein “my boss”. This was a man who was a director of Pitch@Palace and a director, until 2022, of St George’s House Trust, a charity founded by Prince Philip.
The Epstein Files also show that Andrew agreed to help negotiate an $8bn cash-for-oil deal between a Chinese sovereign wealth fund and the rulers of the United Arab Emirates during an official taxpayer-funded visit to China in 2010. Emails reveal he and David Stern discussed the plan with Jeffrey Epstein while he was under house arrest.
This clip and transcript from The Lownie Report looks at the role of Andrew’s staff and also the collective dropping of the ball from the Royal Rota, who seem unfit for purpose, having failed to remotely hold the Royal Family to account and still seemingly engaged in a relationship that is as antiquated as it is offensive to the intelligence of a public who demand transparency over highly controlled photo ops.
Who helped to organise prostitutes for Andrew?
Well, certainly on the trips abroad, there seem to have been others. Either his hosts would provide, particularly in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, they would provide the escorts. In this country, there were staff, I’m told that they even had someone doing it when he was in the Navy, amazingly enough.
But yes, I think a private secretary, possibly an equerry, certainly members of his staff. I know from talking to members of his staff that prostitutes were picked up from Heathrow and brought to him on a regular basis, and clearly that would have been organised by his staff. This was when he had actually lost his royal position.
So this was privately employed staff, the secretaries. But who ordered the police escort when he came up to the Duchess of Kent’s funeral? Presumably the police coordinating with one of his secretaries. Certainly I know that Amanda Thirsk would request to diplomats, for example, that he likes blondes. So she was involved in making some of these requests. I was certainly told that.
So there might be a case that some of his staff should be charged?
Yes, absolutely. I think this is where it begins to open the can of worms. I keep saying that once you start picking at this ball of wool, the whole thing will begin to unfurl. You’re absolutely right that there’s no logical reason why those who abetted him should not also be investigated.
And how do you think the royal rota has fared throughout this entire saga? Because it seems to me that they’ve dropped the ball and shown themselves not to be fit for purpose.
Yes, absolutely. I think people are now talking about the end of the royal rota. I talked to the Foreign Press Association yesterday, of course not part of the royal rota, and they rather resent it. They have been much more determined in their reporting. The problem is that certain papers have just put out the standard Palace line.
So we’ve been fed a whole series of stories about Andrew’s mental health, the daughters being innocent victims of their parents’ activities, etc., none of which is really true. It is a shame that they don’t seem to be challenging and doing the job of journalists, actually investigating for themselves whether this PR spin has any validity at all.
How different is the reporting in the international press versus reporting in the UK press? For example, there was a huge chasm, as you wrote in your book Traitor King, when it came to Edward and Wallace. Similarly with the George Smith–Michael Fawcett rape allegations about 20 years ago — they were reported extensively abroad but barely touched by the UK press.
Is there still a disparity between the way this is being reported in the UK and the way it’s being reported abroad?
Yes, I think so. It was interesting when I talked to the Foreign Press Association yesterday, there were about 80 people. It was a meeting called very much at the last minute. I spent over an hour doing interviews with people after my talk, and they were really interested, particularly about whether he would speak to the Senate.
So yes, I do think those journalists, and we’re seeing it with Substack and some of the podcasts, are asking the really tough questions. They’re the ones doing the research and going through the material. It’s really citizen journalists who are driving the story in some ways. So I do think we now need to look at the royal rota.
I don’t know quite how that changes. I suppose it comes from the Palace saying they will now brief everyone on the same terms and there won’t be any favourites. Clearly there will be certain journalists and papers that will fight against that, and I suspect there will still be preferential briefing behind the scenes. But a more open form of dealing with the press is now warranted.
And one of the themes of the relationship between the royal family and the press is that there are almost never any interviews. The Queen basically never gave an interview. Charles tends to do documentary puff pieces. William and Kate have done more interviews than Charles and Queen Elizabeth II. But the way in which a Member of Parliament has to have an interview and be challenged with questions, there’s a convention that we don’t do that with the royal family.
Do you think that’s something that might change, or might even need to change, for them to have any kind of integrity going forward?
Yes, I think people want them to appear accountable. They want more natural engagements than these rather stiff and, as you say, very controlled set pieces. What’s interesting is that the Duke of Edinburgh, way back in the 60s, was actually doing lots of programmes and being interviewed, so we’ve gone back a little bit, things have tightened.
One of the problems I had researching the book was that there were so few statements by Prince Andrew. Sarah Ferguson was always giving interviews, so there’s lots of material there, but he gave very few interviews, again very controlled, always to organisations like Tatler, who he knew wouldn’t say anything too critical.
And yes, I think we have reached a tipping point where they’re going to have to be much more engaged with the press and responsive to them, rather than just telling them things.
