The not-so-grand old Duke of York
Car-crash interview only proved prince’s sense of entitlement
SOME years ago, when mini skirts were the new fashion and feminism was called ‘women’s lib’, a relative of mine worked in an office with a bunch of other like-minded girls.
They enjoyed the work and the banter was fun. They even went out together on a Saturday night. There were only two problems.
First, the stools on which they sat to greet their customers were uncomfortable. They were moulded plastic and stuck to the thighs in hot weather. They were also designed with a hole in the middle of each seat.
The second was one of the managers who thought it tremendous fun to stick his finger up through those holes as the girls sat doing their jobs.
How he laughed. How the girls squealed. He called it a friendly jape. I’d call it sexual assault.
Of course nobody ever called him out about his actions. He was the boss and they were office girls, some barely out of their teens.
They hated what he did and the ease with which he did it but were terrified to speak out.
Back then, that’s what happened; predatory behaviour was almost an occupational hazard of being female, especially in an environment where men enjoyed a sense of entitlement – entitlement in this case to molest women.
Thank God that’s all in the past then, eh? Except it’s not. Because, dear reader, I bring you Prince Andrew.
His Royal Lowness has been all over the media this week thanks to a car-crash interview which was meant to lay the rumours surrounding his character to rest but in fact merely served to affirm to every woman watching that this was the sort of man you should avoid being trapped in a lift with.
Now, I have no idea what the truth is about the actions of the
Queen’s second son. Perhaps, as he told the BBC this week, he really cannot recall meeting the woman who has accused him of having sex with her when she was 17, after she had been procured by Jeffrey Epstein.
Maybe he really did think it was the honourable thing to do to go and stay with a child rapist for four days in New York. And perhaps he didn’t know his chum was at the centre of a sex trafficking ring on all those other occasions when they partied together.
But here’s the thing. In that interview the word ‘sorry’ never passed his lips. There was no regret for Epstein’s victims’ ordeal, no empathy for the terrible things which had happened to them, only self-regard and arrogance.
Why? Because not only does Andrew live an entitled life, but he feels that entitlement acutely, and acts upon it.
Of course entitlement doesn’t happen in isolation.
It has to be enabled by others, whether that’s flunkies and hangers on dazzled by wealth and status or office co-workers who look the other way, not wanting to rock the boat.
We cannot rely solely on its victims to fight it – it must be challenged by us all.
Evil triumphs when good men (or women) do nothing.
Low or high-born, that’s never been more true.