As Prince Andrew is catapulted back into the spotlight with a Netflix dramatisation of his car crash Newsnight interview, Scoop, the Mirror looks back at the most bizarre claims that have been made about the King’s brother
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Prince Andrew: Former royal bodyguard discusses ‘teddies’
The Duke of York is back in the spotlight with the release of Scoop – a Netflix film about his now-infamous interview with Newsnight.
The tell-all talk, back in 2019, was such a car crash it saw Andrew step back from royal duties in disgrace shortly afterwards. Andrew made a series of revelations that painted the embattled Duke’s life as less than ordinary, and former aides have also come forward over the years to provide further insight into the idiosyncratic life Andrew leads behind closed doors.
The dramatisation of the interview – which stars Gillian Anderson, Billie Piper, and Rufus Sewell – comes over two years after a civil suit brought by Virginia Giuffre against Andrew reached a settlement out of court – reportedly worth millions of pounds. The settlement contained no admission of liability, guilt or wrongdoing on Prince Andrew’s part.
As one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre alleged that the billionaire paedo financier flew her in for sex with the Duke of York on three occasions – an accusation which the Duke “absolutely and categorically” denies. Andrew reportedly became “tearful” when the Queen told him he was being stripped of royal patronages and military title amid the court case.
However, the scandal that has surrounded these allegations and his connection to Epstein and his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s girlfriend who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2022 – are not the only claims that have haunted Andrew over the years. Here are seven bizarre claims about the life of Prince Andrew…
Teddy bear collection
The prince would “shout and scream” if his collection of teddy bears were knocked over while maids were cleaning his private quarters at Buckingham Palace, according to a former royal cop. Speaking on an ITV documentary about pal Ghislaine’s fall from grace, ex-royal protection officer Paul Page has revealed a number of intimate details about the late Queen’s second son.
Page had access to the prince’s private quarters while working in Royalty and Specialist Protection Command between 1998 and 2004. But Page claims the bedroom was noticeably different to a room belonging to most adult men. On his bed the Duke of York had 50-60 stuffed animals and toys.
He said: “It had about 50 or 60 stuffed toys positioned on the bed and basically there was a card the inspector showed us in a drawer and it was a picture of these bears all in situ. The reason for the laminated picture was if those bears weren’t put back in the right order by the maids, he would shout and scream.”
Journalist Elizabeth Day was introduced to the bears while on a visit to Buckingham Palace in 2019. She said: “It seemed rather strange that a grown man should be so amused by a stuffed toy.”
The no-sweat defence
A weird claim made during the Maitlis interview sent the internet into overdrive as experts and photographers sought to disprove Andrew’s belief that he was a medical anomaly. He told Maitlis that his stint as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War had led him to “overdose on adrenaline” because he was always being shot at. He told her: “I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when I was shot at … it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
The condition Andrew used to defend himself, anhydrosis, is a real one, but it’s rare. Adrenaline exposure is also not widely recognised as a cause of the condition, but there have been reports of soldiers developing an unexplained inability to sweat. Andrew used the condition to rebut Giuffre’s accusations, who claimed that when she met Andrew on the dancefloor of a club, he was sweating profusely.
Memory lapses
Another avenue the prince pursued to defend himself against Giuffre’s claim was that he couldn’t have slept with her because he was at a children’s party at a Pizza Express in Woking. After Maitlis grilled him on why he remembered that event so clearly, he said: “[It was an] unusual thing for me to do”.
Despite remembering vividly the day spent with Princess Beatrice and pals, the prince’s memory was patchier when faced with photographic evidence. Maitlis showed him a photograph of him wrapping his arm around Giuffre, then aged 17, with Ghislaine caught standing in a doorway in the background.
He told the interviewer he has “no memory of that photograph ever being taken.” Claiming it might have been doctored, he continued: “It’s a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored.” And the final oddity in this defence was a claim that due to being a “member of the Royal Family” he would never “hug” in a photo.
Travelling clothes
Piling on more evidence to his defence in the same interview, Andrew said his wardrobe choice meant he couldn’t have been present. Questioning the authenticity of the image, he claimed he always wore a “suit and tie” while in London – suggesting the man wearing trousers and a shirt must have been doctored in.
“Those are my travelling clothes if I’m going overseas,” he said. Following the claim, the prince was pictured in several photos of him attending London events without a three-piece.
Unconventional divorce
The unconventional relationship with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson after an unhappy marriage is strange to some. They married in 1986 at a grand wedding held in Westminster Abbey but split in 1991 before they divorced in 1996.
Fergie has previously said she spent their marriage “renting videos” while her husband “frolicked with 27 concubines”. Fergie was not without her own weird scandals after being photographed having her big toe sucked by her “financial adviser” while on holiday in 1992, which made Prince Philip furious.
But the real reason for the split was Andrew’s long tours abroad with the Royal Navy. Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar around the time, she said: “I spent my entire first pregnancy alone”. The couple remained extremely close as they raised their daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie – and their unusual relationship has even meant they have been forced to deny they had got back together. Sarah once told the Daily Mail: “We’re the happiest divorced couple in the world. We’re divorced to each other, not from each other.”
Missing the mark
There are several points in the Maitlis interview when the late Majesty’s second son doesn’t seem to “get it”. Sources fed back after the televised disaster that Andrew felt “positive” about how it went despite it being widely judged a trainwreck. According to The Sunday Times, the decision to appear was “one of the single worst PR moves in recent history.”
And writing in the same newspaper in 2019, Maitlis claimed the duke was so short-sighted over how bad the interview would be received that he suggested “next time” she came to Buckingham Palace they should discuss Pitch at Palace – his royal start-up venture. In the wake of the interview Andrew was sacked from public duties and forced to step down from all associations — and not able to return to work like intended.
Though the interview often touched on the vile behaviour of his paedo pal, he was criticised for failing to express sorrow for the victims. He also failed when given a chance to slam Epstein’s actions, saying that he did not regret his relationship with him.
Prince Andrew said: “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.” The appearance fed into other anecdotal reports, including one from a former masseuse who said he was “arrogant and strange” during massages.
‘Playboy Prince’
As former cop and guard Page revealed Andrew’s love for stuffed animals, he recalled suspecting that the prince and Ghislaine were lovers because she would come and go from his apartment “at will”. Ghislaine and the duke’s other female friend would rarely sign in when visiting, he said, which raised further suspicion. These comings and goings were very in much in line with Andrew’s alleged image as the “Playboy Prince” and “Randy Andy”.
One journalist referred to him as, “Randy Andy and His Web of Armcandy”, because he was surrounded at all times by beautiful and glamorous women. And all the while, he was meant to be working as a trade ambassador for the UK.
Despite his title, his appearance at lavish dos across the globe painted him as someone not very interested in the job at hand. In an article for the Guardian, Co-Founder of the Women’s Equality Party, Catherine Mayer, charted Andrew’s trajectory from “golden prince” to the “embarrassing uncle”.
She said: “He very quickly went from being a sort of bachelor prince to being somebody who has no use, no purpose, spends money too obviously, takes too many flights, gets his bad nickname, gets married, gets divorced. He went from being the golden prince to being the embarrassing uncle in a series of very inevitable steps. And that was before he became as embarrassing as he is now.”
A version of this article was published in January 2022.
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