Is Prince Andrew actually as vulgar and entitled as he is portrayed by Michael Sheen in Amazon’s new drama? Spoiler alert! You guess, one battle-worn courtier tells the Mail

A Very Royal Scandal shines an uncomfortable highlight on a time the Royal Household would like to overlook.

From his inaugural ‘f*** off’ to a hapless flunkey, the most recent TV retelling of Prince Andrew’s catastrophic Newsnight interview is a brutal portrait of the disgraced Duke.

The November 2019 broadcast that he hoped would clear his identify torpedoed his royal profession, noticed him trapped in a transatlantic courtroom battle together with his intercourse abuse accuser, Virginia Giuffre, and ultimately stripped of his HRH title by his personal mom.

Because of this the three-part Prime Video collection – starring Michael Sheen because the Prince and Ruth Wilson as interviewer Emily Maitlis – has been considered with dread by some within the royal family, with many former employees seen on display. However simply how correct is it…

The prince

Consider probably the most conceited, entitled, ­buffoonish and obnoxious bore you may. Now double it. Solely then would possibly you start to return near Sheen’s brilliantly terrible portrayal of Prince Andrew.

It’s a characterisation that lots of those that labored for the Duke would possibly discover acquainted.

Unprintable expletives fly from the royal mouth – as they do in actual life. I do know of 1 courtier who insists they may nearly really feel the Prince’s spittle on their face as he as soon as screamed at them: ‘F*** off out of my workplace and f*** off out of my life’ for daring to supply him some unpalatable recommendation.

In A Very Royal Scandal Andrew boasts that his mom calls him ‘the Palace entrepreneur’. That was most undoubtedly replicated in actual life: in a humiliating 2017 interview with The Sunday Instances he as soon as boasted of being an ‘concepts manufacturing facility’ and the Palace’s ‘entrepreneur in residence’. 

The dramatisation, in the meantime, sees Sheen’s boorish Prince arrogantly selecting to not watch the interview because it was broadcast however as a substitute taking part in a sport of ‘guess who’ at a cocktail party with a Submit-It notice studying ‘Donald Trump’ caught to his brow, pretending to bend over and go wind.

His excessive jinks are punctured when ‘Mummy’ comes on the telephone ­having watched it herself. It’s an unlikely state of affairs since many consider the Queen couldn’t deliver herself to see her son so humiliated and was as a substitute briefed by courtiers.

Nonetheless it isn’t all one-sided and Sheen portrays a few of Andrew’s vulnerability on display: his devotion to his daughters, his frustration on the maelstrom of accusations he can by no means pretty defend himself in opposition to and the dawning realisation that his gamble has truly pulled the rug from underneath his toes.

Fact score: 4/5

The aftermath

These with intimate data of what happened inform me that Andrew’s self-congratulatory back-slapping within the drama after the interview is spot on.

Relieved that he had made all his deliberate factors – together with his outstanding declare that he couldn’t have met his accuser, Virginia ­Giuffre, as a result of he was at Pizza Categorical together with his daughter – the Prince merely had no comprehension of how badly it had gone.

‘It was a threat and I felt it… thanks, Emily,’ he smiles. Andrew additionally has some cringeworthy banter with the digital camera crew, advising them how they need to run the wires for his or her gear and what the very best angles are. ‘100 per cent DoY (Duke of York),’ says one former staffer, by means of gritted tooth.

Fact score: 5/5

Royal telephones

One howler reveals Andrew within the backyard at Royal Lodge, cell phone in hand. A name is available in and the id of the caller flashes up on the display: ‘Charles.’

The voice on the tip of the telephone, belonging to the then Prince of Wales, asks him ‘does Mummy know?’, prompting one more epic meltdown from the Duke of York.

The King, nevertheless, has famously by no means owned a cellular – he’s a technophobe who solely makes use of a landline – which permits employees to display his calls.

And as a result of unusual nature of household relations – plus the truth that the monarch hates private confrontation – he can be unlikely to name his brother to debate a matter as contentious as this. Senior royals principally enable their personal secretaries and employees do the speaking.

Fact score: 0/5

Gravel nightmare

A small level however one for true royal followers: Maitlis is proven operating chaotically over paving stones to get into the Palace. In actuality, the doorway she would have used is roofed in purple gravel, which is a nightmare for anybody in heels, as I can personally attest.

Fact score: 0/5

His gatekeeper

The Prince’s devoted Non-public Secretary Amanda Thirsk, who carried the can for a lot of the interview’s fall-out, is portrayed as a dumpy, fairly hapless and out-of-her-depth emotional punchbag for Andrew.

At one level he challenges her to a race in his backyard, calls her ‘fatty’ and watches whereas she will get to her knees to tie his shoelaces.

Which has come as fairly a shock to former colleagues of Mrs Thirsk, who level out she was truly a whip-thin ‘ice maiden’ who was Andrew’s de facto chief of employees.

She was, it’s true, staunchly – and a few would possibly say blindly – loyal to the Queen’s son, maybe a deadly mistake given his character flaws.

One former colleague tells how Mrs Thirsk began as an workplace supervisor and ruthlessly fought her solution to the highest. ‘She even moved her workplace proper subsequent to the Duke’s, so nothing acquired previous her,’ they declare.

Her frosty manner earned her few buddies, nevertheless. ‘She was loathed by the Queen’s family,’ the supply provides. ‘She was a gatekeeper with a capital G.’

Others keep in mind her extra charitably. A good friend stated: ‘Her husband sadly died younger and she or he labored exhausting to deliver up her three ladies as a single mom. It wasn’t straightforward. She had plenty of adversity to cope with.’

It’s to her credit score, they argue, that she rose to a place of energy in a male-dominated and typically starchy organisation. Personally, I discovered her robust however not unfriendly. She was additionally deeply insecure at instances and aware of the enemies mendacity in wait. As her world crashed down, she was additionally remarkably magnanimous in defeat.

It was Mrs Thirsk who inspired Andrew to arrange his profitable Pitch At Palace scheme, matching entrepreneurs with angel buyers, in a bid to revive his repute after he was pressured to give up his function as a roving UK commerce ambassador after a string of controversies.

Nonetheless she additionally acted as a ‘rogue operator’, bypassing the Palace hierarchy and Press Workplace in a battle to create an impartial empire inside the family construction.

Wrongly satisfied that the notorious image of Andrew with a younger Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) had been faked, she employed her personal consultants to attempt to show it. And he or she was instrumental in organising his BBC interview, secretly assembly with the Newsnight workforce at Buckingham Palace and negotiating with the broadcaster earlier than getting Andrew on board and ­presenting it as a fait accompli to senior courtiers.

Sarah, Duchess of York, later stated: ‘This has Amanda Thirsk’s palms throughout it’. It was Mrs Thirsk who inspired Andrew to talk ‘overtly and actually’, believing that wasthe solely solution to persuade folks of his innocence. It led to the royal’s outstanding admission that he couldn’t remorse ever assembly convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein due to the doorways the friendship opened to him.

Mrs Thirsk advised a good friend: ‘The Duke wants all of our help. That is such a courageous and honourable factor to do. I actually hope the general public and media can see his humility, settle for his apology and consider his denial. ‘And most significantly enable him to get on together with his work.’

Sadly, as we all know, Andrew confirmed little in the way in which of remorse and did not apologise as soon as for his behaviour – or supply any remorse for Epstein’s victims.

Because the programme depicts, Mrs Thirsk was pressured to give up her job as personal secretary, though she continued to work for Pitch At Palace till the next 12 months.

Mrs Thirsk was final heard of working for a Chinese language e-commerce group – and nonetheless received’t hear a phrase in opposition to her former boss, by all accounts.

Fact score: 2/5

The Courtier

The Queen’s Non-public Secretary Sir Edward Younger is performed by Alex Jennings who, confusingly, performed Prince Charles in 2006’s The Queen and the present monarch’s uncle, the abdicated King Edward VIII, in Netflix’s The Crown. Jennings performs Sir Edward as a stereotypical ­senior courtier: old-fashioned, snobby and posh.

He definitely appears the half: One supply says of the famously tight-lipped aide: ‘He appears like he has a poker up his a***, so good casting!’ Different colleagues, nevertheless, insist Sir Edward was removed from the cliche depicted on display.

One factor everybody agrees on is that the Palace stalwart, who left final 12 months after 20 years working for the late Queen, would by no means have uttered a few of the extra outre strains within the present: together with a reference to royal ‘kiddie fiddling’, a ‘clusterf*** worthy of the Kardashians’ and wailing they are going to now be ‘shovelling extra s*** than Dyno-Rod’.

Nor would he ever refer so casually to ‘Charles’, ‘Edward’ or ‘Anne’ (of whom he sighs is ‘on a horse someplace unreachable’) – he would all the time name them by their formal title. In spite of everything, it was Sir Edward and his workforce who have been later liable for the late Queen’s elegantly punchy ‘recollections could fluctuate’ comment. So, one other pinch of dramatic licence.

In a later scene Sir Edward even goes to Mrs Thirsk’s workplace earlier than the printed demanding to know what ‘leverage’ she has with the BBC to drag the interview and providing to ‘make a name’ himself. All improper. In fact, the Palace knew the harm was performed and was merely making ready its response.

Mrs Thirsk had no energy to drag the plug and nobody working for the Head of State would have leaned on the nationwide broadcaster to cancel such a big interview, nevertheless unhealthy the result was set to be.

Fact score: 2/5

Andrew’s Exile

In one of many closing scenes, Sir Edward is proven visiting a shamed Andrew to interrupt the information that he wouldn’t be allowed to hitch the remainder of the Royal ­Household to mark his mom’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, informing him that Covid can be given as an excuse. In actuality it was by no means meant for the Prince to hitch his mom on the balcony at Buckingham Palace: that was reserved for working royals.

Nonetheless he was invited to a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral as a comfort, which was in keeping with the settlement made when he stepped down from official duties, which permitted him to attend bigger household capabilities. 

Though Covid was given as the explanation for his absence by the Palace, there was no suggestion he didn’t genuinely have it – and Andrew has attended different royal occasions since.

A Very Royal Scandal closes with Andrew gazing wistfully out of the window at Royal Lodge on the wreckage of his life.

‘The place do I am going? What do I do? Hmmmm. Inform me. What do I do?’ he wails to Sir Edward, who’s advised by the Duchess of York that she can’t supply him a cup of tea as they’ve needed to let the employees go (one other piece of inventive licence).

‘You reside with the implications of your actions, Sir,’ the courtier says, then bows and leaves.

The ultimate picture is that damning {photograph} of Andrew with the then teenage Virginia Roberts, which haunts him to today. His supporters nonetheless insist it’s faked.

Fact score: 1/5

• A Very Royal Scandal is streaming on Prime Video.