Members of the Royal Family rarely give media interviews. Queen Elizabeth, in her wisdom, never once sat down to be grilled during her record-breaking 70-year reign.

The reluctance to ‘let in daylight upon magic’, as Victorian journalist Walter Bagehot put it, is entirely understandable. Any royal interview is a big, important event – not to mention a risk. It goes without saying that it is imperative to tell the truth.

Prince Andrew’s disastrous encounter with Emily Maitlis in 2019 was a perfect example of how not to do things. And now, with the disclosure at the weekend of emails between the Duke of York and his late friend, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, that notorious interview appears to have been an even greater blunder than previously thought.

In one of the creepy emails, released by the Financial Conduct Authority, Prince Andrew implored Epstein to ‘keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’

That was sent in February 2011. Yet Andrew insisted to Ms Maitlis that he had ceased all contact with the disgraced American financier in early December 2010, when they were photographed walking through New York’s Central Park. The duke told her emphatically: ‘I never had any contact with him from that day forward.’

The new evidence suggests that Andrew may have lied. Since the emails were published last weekend, there has been no comment from the duke. This cannot stand.

When the brother of our head of state, who was still on the public payroll at the time he sent these emails, apparently misleads the nation in a television interview with the BBC, the matter cannot simply be brushed under the carpet.

Not only does Andrew remain eighth in line to the throne, he is a member of the Order of the Garter, our highest order of chivalry.

Andrew chose to give an interview because he imagined it would help salvage his reputation

Significantly, he is also a ‘Counsellor of State’, one of the seven members of the Royal Family legally entitled to deputise for the King, who is still undergoing cancer treatment, ‘in the event that [he] cannot undertake his official duties as Sovereign on a temporary basis due to illness or absence abroad’.

Until 2022, the Counsellors of State were Queen Camilla, Prince William, Harry, Prince Andrew and his elder daughter, Princess Beatrice. Later that year, the King asked Parliament to add his sister, Princess Anne, and brother, Prince Edward, to the list.

The Dukes of York and Sussex are no longer working royals (and nor is Beatrice), yet it was reported the King decided not to remove Andrew and Harry as Counsellors of State because he didn’t want to exacerbate family tensions.

Andrew chose to give an interview because he foolishly imagined it would help salvage his reputation. His nephew the Duke of Sussex, however, appears to hope that giving interviews is a route to making more money.

Prince Harry and Meghan’s sofa talk with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, for example, was meant to launch them as a new ‘power couple’ in Hollywood. 

In fact, it instead alerted Americans that they were a pair of ‘grifters’ (a term later used about the couple by a Spotify exectuive) who were perfectly happy to disparage Harry’s own loving relatives. 

In an email, released by the Financial Conduct Authority, Andrew implored Jeffrey Epstein to ‘keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’

In an email, released by the Financial Conduct Authority, Andrew implored Jeffrey Epstein to ‘keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’

We will never know how inaccurate some of their claims were, because those they attacked, such as Prince William and Catherine, will not respond in public. Yet it is beyond doubt that ‘recollections may vary’, as Harry’s grandmother memorably put it.

Despite all that Harry has done to damage the monarchy, he remains fifth in the line of succession, as well as a Counsellor of State.

The time has now come for the King to inform Parliament that his younger son and his brother Andrew are to be removed as Counsellors of State and struck off the line of succession.

This needs to happen before they do yet more damage to the monarchy.

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