Day shamed Andrew said that he ‘didn’t care any more’
PRInCe Andrew shouted ‘I don’t care any more’ during secret crisis talks after he was stripped of his royal duties, his ex-wife’s ‘toe-sucking’ lover claimed yesterday.
The disgraced Duke of York whined ‘I am being treated unfairly’ during a dramatic family summit in 2019 which saw a distraught Princess Beatrice tell him: ‘You’ve hurt our family.’
Sarah Ferguson’s former lover John Bryan was smuggled into Windsor’s Royal Lodge for a crisis meeting with Andrew after his disastrous newsnight interview about his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey epstein.
Mr Bryan – a former financial adviser to the duchess – said he had been ‘stunned’ to be asked to help the disgraced duke.
He told The Mail on Sunday that the duchess had been desperate for help, saying: ‘She told me that Andrew was in terrible shape. He was distraught. They were distraught.’
Mr Bryan, 67, described the meeting as a ‘cloak-and-dagger’ operation with the Yorks and their children, Beatrice and eugenie, just ten days after the Queen suspended him from all royal duties.
Andrew was ‘very upset’ and ‘looked tired and downcast’, Mr Bryan said. He added that, in front of aides, the duke shouted: ‘I don’t care any more, I don’t care. I am being treated unfairly.’
‘I told him, “You may think you’ve been treated unfairly but you should never, ever say in front of third parties that you don’t care any more,”’ Mr Bryan said. Beatrice, who was with her fiance – now husband – edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, was ‘hugely distressed’, Mr Bryan said.
uS businessman Mr Bryan hit the headlines when he was photographed sunbathing with a topless Sarah Ferguson after her separation from the Prince Andrew.
He was pictured kissing and apparently sucking her toes in 1992, although both he and the duchess claim this was part of a game with Beatrice and eugenie, then aged just four and two.
The relationship continued for four years and they have remained friends, though Mr Bryan has never previously spoken about their relationship.
He said that in 2019, he was picked up at a five-star hotel in Ascot and driven to Royal Lodge in a Range Rover with blacked- out windows, using a ‘secret entrance’ to avoid Press photographers.
He met with the duchess, who he said was ‘ under intolerable strain’, and agreed to help devise a strategy which he dubbed ‘House of Kroy’ – a play on the word York.
The next day he returned to meet the duke and duchess, Beatrice and her fiancé and eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank. Andrew met him with ‘a handshake and a hug’, he said, adding: ‘We always got along well.’
Over a lunch meeting, Mr Bryan said he told them: ‘You are in the middle of a catastrophe and from here it gets a million times worse.’
He went on: ‘Andrew was so distressed he wasn’t able to focus for more than 40 minutes. I was blown away by how much pain he was in. And how much suffering he was enduring. It was very real.’
One of epstein’s trafficking victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed she had been forced into sex with the duke when she was just 17, an accusation Andrew has always denied. Mr Bryan said he remained convinced of his innocence.
He said: ‘I saw many of his girlfriends during my relationship with Sarah and never, not once, did he turn up with a woman who was not in her mid-20s.’
He said he had urged Andrew to show sympathy for epstein’s victims, including during a critical meeting with his brother Prince Charles about his future. Mr Bryan even drew up a five-page PR and legal strategy blueprint which Andrew ultimately disregarded, he said.
The duke and duchess declined to comment. It comes as the House of Lords will today debate legislation barring Prince Andrew and Prince Harry from standing in for King Charles as Counsellors of State.
PRInCe Andrew jetted to Bahrain in secret last week amid claims he is hoping for a return to public life, it was revealed yesterday.
He is reportedly staying in a five-star hotel as a guest of the Bahraini royal family, in the hope of a role as an intermediary between the West and the oilrich Gulf states during the energy crisis, according to the Sun on Sunday. His spokesman declined to comment.
The Royal Suite at the Four Seasons in Manama costs £8,600-a-night, and coffee is served in 24-carat gold cups.
‘I am being treated unfairly’