The Prince and the Pervert

Prince Andrew’s recent disaster of an interview on the BBC, in which he flamed out trying to justify his past friendship with convicted sex felon and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein amid sordid allegations of his own that the Prince had sex with an underage girl, is a valuable crisis communications lesson for anyone who must face the media to explain hard-to-explain facts. 

But first, whoever prepared the good Prince for this interview should be taken to the Tower of London by order of the Queen, there to suffer the same fate as Anne Boleyn.

It did not appear that the Prince had received any competent crisis communications counseling at all and struggled to answer the seemingly simplest of questions. And those questions posed by BBC correspondent Emily Maitlis were, by and large, fair and quite predictable, so they should not have come as a surprise. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the Prince stumble through the interview. (Click below to see it in its full epic fail mode). 

The Duke of York bombed so badly that his mum, the 93-year-old Queen, immediately stripped him of all his official duties. At a feeble attempt at damage control, Buckingham Palace quickly announced that the 59-year-old was “withdrawing from public life.” Then, some 230 organizations and charities, of which he was the official patron, quickly started to disassociate themselves from him. Even students at a local university applied significant pressure for their school to drop the Prince as chancellor, claiming he was unfit to serve because of his “association with a known pedophile.” 

Talk about an “Annus horribilis.”

For the record, Andrew denies all allegations. 

Let’s briefly review the bidding, starting with facts not in dispute: Epstein, with a well-known penchant for underage girls, was a convicted sex offender who had served time in federal prison for sex with minors. Somewhere along the way back in 1991, Epstein and the Prince met and became friends. During the course of that friendship Andrew was often seen in Epstein’s company, at his Park Avenue mansion, and on Little St. James, his private island in the Caribbean. They often partied together at various clubs. There is a clear photo of Andrew with his arm around the waist of his accuser, Virginia Giuffre (née Roberts), who was just 17 at the time of the alleged sexual encounters, even as he denies ever knowing her. Perhaps. Royals do meet an awful lot of commoners, after all, and a prince can’t be expected to remember them all. But somehow his denials ring hollow the way he explains them.

He then went down a deep rabbit hole when the interviewer brought up a specific meeting Ms. Giuffre remembered when they were dancing, recalling he was sweating profusely. Andrew then said that was not possible because he does not sweat – something about a permanent adrenaline spike after having being shot at during the Falklands War. Seriously. The next day the media were awash in a cascade of photos of Andrew leaving various night spots over the years with sweat pouring down his royal visage. 

The interview only got worse.

Putting aside the inevitable he said/she said for a moment, the Prince next stumbled badly trying to explain why he flew across the pond just to break up the 28-year-old bromance in person, as he claims, after learning of Epstein’s crimes. It strains credulity. I know Royals are occasionally accused of being out of touch, but had he never heard of telephones?

Beyond his method of communications, it begs the question of why he felt he had to address that sticky wicket at all. 

But Andrew’s greatest sin was one of omission: not showing an ounce of empathy for any of Epstein’s victims. He should have led with that, and reinforced that message repeatedly throughout his time under the hot lights. But alas, he remained Royally aloof from the matter at hand.

In a way, it reminds me of that song “What Do the Simple Folk Do?” from the Broadway musical, Camelot, in which King Arthur and Lady Guinevere wonder what commoners do to pass the time. (Interesting coincidental sidenote: the musical premiered in 1960, the same year Prince Andrew was born. Ah, but I digress). At the end of the song, the King opines that simple folk sit around and wonder what Royal folk do.

Well, we simple folk wonder no more. And we are not amused. Ew!