‘FINALLY, ANDREW HAS WOKEN UP’

Prince Andrew’s decision to declare war on his accuser is perhaps the first sensible thing the embattled royal has done in more than a decade. When the Epstein scandal first broke, the Queen’s second son embarked on a journey of denials, legal letters and, ultimately, a disastrous attempt to set the record straight.

At the time, I was royal editor of The Sun and clearly recall my conversations with Andrew’s Palace advisers. Like nearly all of the national papers, we had just run the now-infamous pictures of the prince and his paedophile pal locked in conversation in a New York park.

From that moment on, Buckingham Palace has dealt with this never-ending farce with all the skill and common sense of Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em’s Frank Spencer. But the blame for how this relatively simple case of one person’s word against another’s has come all the way to the steps of an American court lies entirely at Andrew’s feet.

When the story first raged, aides would speak of how their job was being made all the more difficult by the Duke of York’s toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance. Right from the start, it seemed as if this spoilt product of a privileged upbringing thought that if he kept his eyes shut for long enough it would all just go away.

It didn’t. When Epstein was rearrested, the spotlight once again swung on to how such a senior member of the Royal Family could possibly still count him as a friend.

And when the man at the centre of one of the most serious royal scandals in living memory then died by suicide in his cell, the grand old duke was left with even more questions to answer.

In reality, Andrew had no choice but to come out all guns blazing and demand to have his say in front of a jury, once a judge ruled there was a case to answer. But for the first time since the start of this scandal, it seems that the 61-year-old prince has finally woken up to how serious this has now become.

With nowhere to hide and despite the best efforts of his legal team, Andrew now has one foot on the steps of the court building where we will finally know which one of them is telling the truth.