Bug? No sweat... Andrew’s Mayfair haunt parties on

AMID all the gloom, a ray of light for Prince Andrew. His favourite nightspot, Tramp, is to stay open in defiance of Boris Johnson’s advice that people should avoid clubs to try to slow the spread of coronavirus.

‘At times like these, our cause for laughter and happiness becomes gripped by the unknown, and the simple pleasures among friends and families become most valuable to us,’ says Tramp’s manager David Fleming.

‘For this reason, we have taken the decision to keep the club open until such a time that we are prevented from doing so.

‘We pride ourselves on maintaining a home from home for our family of members and now it seems more important than ever. Let’s raise a glass to this episode being over before too long.’

The Duke of York, right, was something of a regular at Tramp. The nightclub in Jermyn Street, St James’s, is where he was said to have danced with Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘sex slave’ Virginia Roberts while perspiring profusely in 2001 (Andrew denied the claim).

Tramp is not the only London private members’ club that is determined to stay open. The capital’s most fashionable venue, 5 Hertford Street, where Boris has sometimes been seen, is also refusing to shut its doors. ‘We have decided to implement a partial club closure, effective immediately,’ says its owner, the ‘King of Clubs’, Robin Birley. Although its cigar shop and dining room will close, two floors of the club will remain open, as well as dancefloor Loulou’s. Birley says all staff at the club will remain on full pay ‘for as long as this crisis takes to resolve’. However, elsewhere the drawbridges are going up. ‘Corbin & King has closed its restaurants from March 17 until further notice,’ says a spokesman for the Wolseley and Delaunay eateries. ‘Our priority now is to look after our staff and ensure we remain in the best possible shape ready to reopen.’