Prince Andrew’s BBC interview was utterly brilliant

Doddering Prince Andrew, known as Randy Andy among the Teterboro class, appeared on BBC’s Newsnight Saturday evening for a sit-down from Buckingham Palace to set the record straight on his relationship with dead sex trafficking kingpin Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s being called some of the best television of the year, or at least the best episode yet of Brass Eye, despite the BBC’s Emily Maitlis failing to ask the Duke of York the most obvious question on everyone’s mind, ‘Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?’

‘It would be a considerable stretch to say he was a very close friend,’ Andrew said of Epstein, explaining the pair only saw each other, like, three times a year, or triple as often as many people see their own parents. And what a parent Andrew must be, admitting he invited Epstein to his daughter Beatrice’s 18th birthday party after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes with a minor. But Andrew insists he wasn’t aware of that at the time.

The boneheaded royal was a trooper, conducting the entire 45-minute interview without giggling once, though appeared to be on the verge several times. From questions about teenage girl pile-on orgies, to being the guest of honor at a dinner celebrating Epstein’s release from prison, to Andrew personally inviting Epstein to Windsor Castle, the cartoonishly aloof aristocrat managed to turn what may have been a political bloodbath into an episode of Benny Hill. It was brilliant, actually. In exchange for toppling an international sex trafficking ring involving some of the most powerful men in the world, the plebs got slapstick entertainment instead.

That’s a big difference in our cultures. A member of the ruling class allowing himself to be ridiculed for an hour is considered a fair trade off over actual justice, since everyone knows nothing is going to happen to him anyway. An American could never pull that off, we’re too sincere and we revel in outrage. When criminals like Jussie Smollett go for a sit down to clear their name, they must rehearse for hours. The goal is to be convincing, to push out some tears and pull the heartstrings and the public is judging how Oscar-worthy is their performance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Like when Trevor Noah’s joke to Hillary Clinton that she had Epstein murdered was met with an awkward outburst of laughter and her trademark deranged, 1,000-yard gaze, she terrified a nation. But Hillary may have been better off taking the Prince Andrew approach of feigned naïveté. ‘Well that’s just preposterous, Trevor. I’m a grandmother. I wouldn’t even know where to find a contract killer.’

Andrew’s most prepared rebuttal addressed accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s claim that they’d danced together at Tramp nightclub in London, and that Andrew was sweating profusely.

‘There’s a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition in which I don’t sweat, or I didn’t sweat at the time,’ he said. ‘It was almost impossible for me to sweat and only because I’ve done some things in the recent past that I’m able to start doing that again.’ [at 21:28 in the video below]

It’s the interview Amy Robach wanted. Just kidding, Robach only wants what ABC News tells her to want. But all this attention has taken a toll on Andrew, victim, as well. ‘It’s almost a mental health issue, to some extent, to me. In the sense it’s been nagging at my mind for a great number of years,’ he says of his decades-long associations with Epstein.

After Epstein became too hot to handle, Andrew says he flew to New York to see the billionaire pedophile in person, not for a last romp with a trafficked nymphet, but to sever a friendship that never really was. ‘I told him because he’d been convicted it was inappropriate for us to be seen together,’ Andrew says in the interview. ‘I felt like doing it over the telephone was the chicken’s way to do it. So I had to go and see him.’

Epstein must not have taken the news well because Prince Andrew ended up staying in Epstein’s mansion for several days during that trip. Breaking up can be so tedious.

‘But I was doing other things while I was there,’ Andrew says to Maitlis, completely flummoxed this wouldn’t have occurred to her. ‘It was a convenient place to stay.’ His judgment to spend several days in the home of a convicted pedophile he crossed an ocean to dump, he says, ‘was probably colored by my tendency to be too honorable. [at 11:45 in the video below]

This is, of course, not how innocent people behave when accused of the worst crime on earth while their reputations dangle on the line. Just look at the knee-jerk indignation from mainline conservatives when they’re smeared as being racists or Nazis, like Candace Owens biting at Rep. Ted Lieu when he suggested as much about her at a hearing earlier this year, as just one example. Most people will jump at any opportunity to defend themselves against atrocious falsehoods, particularly in court. But when asked whether he’d testify under oath, Andrew waffled. ‘Well, I’d have to take legal advice,’ he said.

Perhaps fortunately for him and all of Epstein’s associates, that’s not on the table anytime soon.