The grand old Duke of Dork
One can be too honourable, can’t one, and suffer for reasons that baffle one. Such was the theme of this week’s episode of Life with the Royals, an eternally running series. Prince Andrew, following a BBC interview, has left women gagging at his insensitivity, and organisations he’s been linked to busily dumping him. That’s a sad outcome for a grown man with no actual job, and he has nothing to blame but his vanity.
The interview was his chance to come clean about his loyalty to the awful Jeffrey Epstein, and set the record straight about whether he had sex with a girl Epstein provided, three times she claims, from his bevy of exploited women.
Did he? Well, the prince has lovely manners, knows how to hold a knife and fork, is beautifully groomed, but seems to be an ethical vacuum. One couldn’t see why one wouldn’t invite a sex offender to one’s daughter’s 18th birthday party, for example.
No, he didn’t have sex with his accuser. He’d remember something ‘‘positive’’ like that. His alibi is a pizza parlour in Woking, which must be true because you couldn’t make that stuff up.
Andrew doesn’t notice much. He has no idea that the Metoo movement exists, barely registers that Epstein was a sex offender, though his downfall was extensively reported, and quite possibly never thought anyone would mind if he hopped into bed with girls young enough to be his own daughters, as princes formerly did in places like the cartoons in old-time men’s magazines.
When Andrew told the interviewer about his ‘‘tendency to be too honourable, but that’s just the way it is’’, we got the rare spectacle of a man patting himself on the back twice for misplaced loyalty, a feat that could only be exceeded by Donald Trump, hourly.
‘‘He was incredibly gracious after,’’ said an unnamed BBC person. As hopefully he would be after all his positive encounters.
We can all be dim. I once thought I was at a pleasant dinner party when my then boyfriend whisked me away. I hadn’t registered that group sex would follow dessert. I was young. That’s my excuse. Andrew’s lack of smarts at 59 is rather more special.
We might pause, as Andrew faces universal outrage, loses his friends, and falls back into the arms of his former spouse, forever loyal, to wonder who in public life currently sets the bar high for sexual behaviour. Boris Johnson, whom we expect to be reaffirmed as British prime minister any day, seems to have had more affairs than hot dinners, leaving children in his wake and possibly not knowing how many.
He’s currently unmarried and has a live-in girlfriend at Downing Street. They formerly lived at her flat, where neighbours complained of their comedic nocturnal spats, as in shouts of ‘‘Get off me!’’ from her and ‘‘Stop sitting on my f…ing laptop!’’ from him, followed by a loud crash. I picture him with a lampshade on his head.
If you watch The Crown, as I do, try to imagine any of his predecessors entangling themselves with women as gaily as Johnson has, and carrying on living after saying he’d rather be dead in a ditch. The man could well be too exhausted by breakfast to govern.
As for the president of the United States, he’s spoken crudely about women, but that’s acceptable to many Americans, while simultaneously declaring he’s in line with evangelical Christians, who – incredibly – seem to believe him.
Andrew, if he ever mulls over life’s ticklish problems, might wonder why he looks so terrible by comparison.