Meghan's First P.R. Storm of 2026

26:32and we are of course now also a YouTube show so don't forget to like and subscribe. And when I'm back, Jeffrey Epstein appears to have left out on his desk in 2015 for a photo shoot with a major magazine, a palace email.

26:52Hello and welcome back to the show. Now Jeffrey Epstein is obviously a very sinister man So saying that he did a sinister thing in a way is not news. But what I think is really striking about the latest detail that we got this week is just it really shed some light on the psychology of this man, who to me, it really feels like kind of wanted to own people through the damaging information he possessed about them. And what's striking about that is we were all told back in July by the DOJ and the FBI in this explosive memo that they released that Jeffrey Epstein didn't have a blackmail operation.

27:30And, you know, judge for yourselves what you think. But I think this particular example does hint at a modus operandi on Epstein's part to try to kind of own people via damaging material he had about them, compromat, if you will. So what has basically happened? And this all goes back to 2015. And Epstein did this interview with a journalist called Michael Wolff, who people might have come across because of his coverage of Trump. And he did this with a New York magazine. Michael Wolff was working for New York magazine at the time. So New York magazine commissioned a photographer to go around to Epstein's house and do some portraits of him, do this photo shoot with him, which happened.

28:08And they've actually picked the photographer Christopher Anderson, who's come to prominence recently because he did all of those extreme close-ups of the faces of members of Trump's administration, Caroline Leavitt and other people. So back then, he did some similar shots of Epstein, but he also took this photo of Epstein at his desk in his home and visible on the desk so clearly that you can actually read the text is a printout of an email that was sent to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew's private secretary, his most senior staffer, most senior aide, talking about Sarah Ferguson's debts.

28:46So in other words, damaging, embarrassing, compromising material about the royal family was left on show. But it was an email from four years earlier, from 2011. And it was printed out on a piece of paper. The desk is not particularly cluttered. There aren't mountains of paperwork everywhere. There are other things on the desk, but they're kind of objects that have been put into position. He's not just, you know, like Princess Anne's house is really messy. He's not just a guy who sits there surrounded by mountains of paper, you know, undealt with paperwork. The paper looks fairly fresh. It's not like dog-eared or crumpled.

29:24It looks essentially like Epstein has deliberately placed visibly on the desk an email that had the potential to reputationally damage the palace. It's even to the point that it included Andrew's reply to this email and his actual email address. So you've got even just the email address of his private secretary and Andrew's personal email address is his private information. And it was right there on the desk to be photographed in vivid detail. So, you know, the one big question is, was this just a harmless accident or did Epstein do it on purpose? And I just kind of get out of my head that there is absolutely no reason to have a four-year-old printout of an email that just happens to contain reputationally damaging information for the monarchy.

30:15And therefore, that it must have been a play, you know, either within that argument, there are still two options. One, it's a flex to demonstrate your clout to the journalists so that they take you seriously. or two, it's a warning to the monarchy. You know, I'm sitting on damaging information about you. I can damage your reputations. For me, I'm leaning towards that option because there are loads of emails that Epstein had that would have more successfully demonstrated his clout, including one that, you know, emails Andrew sent him saying what a great guy he was, you know, Sarah Ferguson groveling to him, all connected, no doubt, to the same issue about debt, which I'll unpack in a minute.

31:00But if I was going to try to demonstrate clout, I'd be looking for an email in which a royal family member was saying what a great guy I am, which Epstein had. We know he had it because those emails have come out now. So to me, it looks like Epstein has gone out and picked the specific email that has the potential to reputationally damage the monarchy. It's their dirty laundry. And so that strikes me as a warning to know that you have to keep me on side. I think that's what Epstein's modus operandi was. And that is somewhere short of actual blackmail, because blackmail has to be do this or else.

31:37And what Epstein's doing here is hinting that, you know, if they cut him loose completely or throw him to the wolves or whatever, then there could be consequences. but he's not explicitly stating do this or else but it does hint at the way his brain works that he has psychologically he has a brain that reaches for loosely the kind of blackmail modus operandi even if this is not maybe necessarily a kind of you know actionable criminal lawsuit level of blackmail but i want to go through all the context because the timeline is really important understanding this really really important but i also want to read you through all the material basically including the email itself and what the photographer said about it so i'm going to go through um anderson's story in more detail later because actually his interactions with epstein and epstein got to the point where he was threatening the photographer um and you know demanding the pictures back so i'm going to go through all that in a minute but first of all just a little snippet from him.

32:41So that just explains the email. He says, I took a picture on his desk and you will see an email printed out that is an exchange between Epstein and the Royal Government Office concerning payment from the Duke and Duchess. Now that's not quite true. The exchange is not between Epstein and the Royal Family and not the government. They are the palace. But needless to say, yes, she is. It's Amanda Thirsk, who actually, if you've seen any of the kind of biopics about the Epstein scandal and Andrew, like the Netflix one, I think was called scandal. If you've seen those, Amanda Thirsk is a character in those shows.

33:19So you will remember her being played by Keely Hawes in one of them. I think maybe that was the Netflix one. But yeah, she was Andrew's senior aide. She arranged, brokered the big bombshell interview with the BBC that ended his career as a royal family member. She is his right hand woman. and it's an email to her from a man called John O'Sullivan, who we already knew Sarah Ferguson owed money to. In fact, she owed, we had thought it was£78 ,000. This particular email gives a slightly lower number of$72 ,000. But the point is that we already knew Epstein helped Fergie to pay off this debt, pay off£15 ,000 of it anyway.

34:00And that by doing that, Epstein helped her to restructure her broader debts, which ran into the millions. But this was like a real sticking point that she had to pay this guy. John O'Sullivan had been her PA and she just didn't pay him, basically. And that had caused him real problems, which you'll see from the text of the email, which I'll read now. So this was sent back in February 17, 2011. So that is two months after Andrew and Epstein were photographed walking through Central Park together. And O'Sullivan writes,

35:01in order to reach an agreement with the Duke and Duchess. The Duchess then emailed me twice to say that my offer was acceptable to both her and the Duke. I did not waive my right to receive the money lightly, given the debts incurred as a result of the non-payment and resulting struggle I have endured to try and support myself and pay for my MBA course at Columbia. So that was sent to Amanda Thirsk's actual Palace email address. So you can, you know, anyone now can go on Christopher Anderson's Instagram and see that email address. Obviously, it won't be in use anymore because she left the palace years ago.

35:37But obviously, Epstein at that time was revealing to a photographer the actual real email address of a real household staff member currently employed at that time in 2015. And Andrew's my senior aide and not somebody who even deals with the media, you know, and a press spokesperson's email address would also be sensitive. information, but the press are not actually supposed to go out and start emailing private secretaries directly. So it was sensitive information. And there was also an email address for Andrew there too. Also, again, now I'm sure no longer in use, but at the time it would have been.

36:16And you can see Andrew's reply to this was just, he said, he just writes ER question mark, which might mean what's going on, or it might mean, you know, ER, some people have suggested anyway. E.R. stands for Elizabeth Regina, i.e. the Queen. So he might have been saying perhaps the Queen could help out paying the money. We don't know. He might just have simply been confused about what was going on. But so let's talk a little bit about the actual debt situation. So obviously Fergie ran up mega debts all over town, as they say in the film noir, thrillers and so on and pulp fiction uh but she needed to um she needed to pay some of this stuff off it was finally closing in on her and um so they went to epstein and epstein sorted around with at least this money we don't know you know there were other things going on andrew epstein was brokering meetings between andrew and the banker jess stadey so we don't know whether that that was relevant or what.

37:17But we know for sure that this£15 ,000 was given by Epstein to Fergie to help resolve this debt. And that led to Fergie sending Epstein a groveling email in January 2011. This was a month after Andrew told the BBC in 2019 that he had flown to New York and stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's house overnight, specifically in order to break up his friendship with Epstein in person because that was the honourable thing to do. Obviously, a load of old nonsense, we now know, because Andrew continued emailing with Epstein afterwards. So the significance of this is less that it undermines Andrew's case because that case has already been undermined.

37:57The significance of it is that this story about the debt was a big part of what blew up the Epstein scandal in as far as Andrew was concerned in the first place. So you had end of February, just 10 days, I think, after this email was sent, you have Virginia Jeffries' first newspaper interview in the Mail on Sunday comes out. And she doesn't go as far as saying she was forced to have sex with Andrew, but she does say she was given, I think it was something like$15 ,000 after being flown to London to meet him and, you know, go to nightclub with him and so on. And she talks in that interview about her being sexually abused by Epstein and her traumatic childhood and taking Xanax to numb the pain and all of those kinds of things.

38:44Then in the March, all this stuff comes out about the debt. so it was you know this is this email is from this period of andrew's life where the sky fell in basically and all of a sudden it had gone from andrew's got a friend who's dodgy and you know a convicted pedophile to andrew is implicated in actual real scandal based on his own conduct and actions. And so that was 2011. Now the actual photo shoot does not come about until 2015. So four years later, you know, Andrew did continue to email with Epstein for a number of months after February, March 2011. But there's no suggestion, there's never been any suggestion that he maintained any contact or friendship with Epstein as late as 2015.

39:35So what on earth was this email doing sitting on Epstein's desk? Well, I think I've made it pretty clear what I think. I think Epstein was warning the palace that he had dirt on them. And we know he had dirt on them because of all these emails that have come to light by the Epstein files and via the disclosures by the House Oversight Committee, by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. So as a brief aside, Fergie did apologise for taking Epstein's money. And so in the interest of total fairness, I do want to read some of that apology because, you know, she has the right to say that, as she did at the time, and we are fair at Newsweek.

40:14So she said, I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me. I abhor pedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf. I'm just so contrite, I cannot say. Whenever I can, I will repay the money and will have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again. Now, in a way, this is obviously, there is, you know, the line about abhorring pedophilia is very important and serious. So I don't want to be too dismissive of that. But I have always thought that that first line is one of the most hilarious lines in an apology that I have ever read.

40:54I'm going to read it again. I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became in any way involved with me not i became involved with jeffrey epstein but he became involved with me um yeah well she was apologizing so maybe i should give her the benefit of the doubt um but obviously also those words rang somewhat hollow because we found out very recently last year back end of last year that fergie then epstein saw that statement hit the roof flew off the handle at fergie um and then And she had to send him this grovelling apology saying, you know, how terrible it was. And she just had to say this so that she didn't lose her publishing deal writing children's books.

41:36So her words did ultimately ring slightly hollow in the end. But let's go back to 2015. So it's really interesting. The whole interaction between Epstein and Christopher Anderson, the photographer, is really interesting. So I want to read you at greater length what Anderson actually wrote in his Instagram post. So here's what Anderson had to say. I didn't know much about him, i.e. Epstein, other than the fact that he had heavy connections to powerful men. He wanted to meet me before the shoot to negotiate buying out the pictures after publication. A young woman with an Eastern European accent answered the door.

42:12I would later see the same girl setting up a massage table in a room just off one of his offices. When Epstein arrived, his eyes sized me up like someone always looking for the angles. He quizzed me about my pictures and how the shoot would go and how much I thought my pictures were worth. He said he didn't want anyone else to have the pictures after the magazine published them and offered me$20 ,000 to own them after publication. It was all the money in the world to me at the time. I had a young family and lived basically month to month. He wrote a personal check and handed it to me. The magazine had already given me permission to make such an arrangement and we made it clear that he wouldn't see any of the pictures until after publication.

42:51Several days later, he decided to pull out of the story and started calling me to demand the pictures. I reiterated that the pictures were not his until after publication. Then the threat started. He sent his bodyguard, driver, a massive guy in a long black overcoat and black leather gloves to my studio to intimidate me. It worked. The magazine killed the story too, so I cashed the check and driver came by again to collect the hard drive and make sure I didn't have any more copies of the photos. Today I found the copy on a very old hard drive. And he also notes the picture of Epstein with a giant stuffed tiger, which is true.

43:30There's one photo of him and there's this like life-size stuffed tiger in front of the desk. Very weird guy with very, very, very tacky taste. But there you go. Not his greatest sin by any stretch of the imagination. So what you have there, again, is like Epstein being really aggressive with people and bullying people. And this is what he did to journalists who tried to write about him. There's also, you know, I've talked before about Leon Black and how there was this investigation into Leon Black's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when Black was at BlackRock. and the asset management company and you know Epstein got into these huge arguments with people in Leon Black's private office not at the bank but rather at his estate and you know when demanding money raised personal matters that was what the review the report found and so you just there's so much in the Epstein story that reveals this kind of bullying personality not only to the girls who he abused, but actually also to the people who, you know, the rich, powerful men who he were in his network, who he was friends with and who he brought into this world, all of whom, of course, deny knowledge of his federal crimes.

44:50And in fact, it's worth stating again that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor denies any knowledge of Epstein's federal crimes and always has done and said he has not had sex with any women who were introduced to him by Epstein. but you know like i said back in mark in february 2011 virginia jeffrey made her first allegations against andrew and she said that in time that she was flown to london new york and the u.s virgin islands and made to have sex with andrew and feared death if she refused um and you know eventually she filed this lawsuit against andrew in 2022 andrew settled outside court out of court rather, while denying liability.

45:32But for the monarchy, we now know just how damaging the Epstein saga got. Andrew stripped of all his royal titles. Back in 2015, he was still a working royal. He had his reputation still. Christopher Anderson says he didn't know that much about Epstein, which I'm sure is true. But the world did know that Epstein was a convicted child abuser. And 2015 was the year that the real allegations started to come out. Over 2015, 2016, civil court cases filed in America against Epstein and later Gillespie Maxwell led to out-of-court settlements. Virginia Jeffery was one of those women who sued Epstein and then culminating, obviously, in 2019 when Epstein was rearrested by the FBI and took his own life, according to the New York Medical Examiner, in a jail cell in Manhattan.

46:22so look it was an early stage but it's just so chilling that he had the power to just calmly leave on the desk like really sensitive information about the monarchy and that is what andrew did to the royals he put them in that position and he gave america's probably most prolific notorious powerful paedophile power over the british monarchy and that is just a crazy situation for him to have created, in part through his stupidity, in part probably through selfishness and entitlement. But it's a real warning for the monarchy that they do have to give a good upbringing to the royal children of today to make sure that these kind of things do not happen again in the future.

47:08Okay, I'm going to take one more quick break, but just a reminder to follow me on X. I'm at Jack underscore Royston. And when I'm back, a magazine cover has proclaimed the rise of Queen Kate. But what on earth would Camilla think?

47:27Welcome back to the show. Now, it has been a tricky week, actually, for Princess Kate, not least of all because of a magazine cover story that was probably intended to be a massive a PR win for her, but has landed kind of awkwardly. So this was a piece in the Times magazine. So this is not the New York Times. This is the Times of London, as it's sometimes called, but it's basically Britain's newspaper of record. It's one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in Britain. And it was based on a whole load of interviews with some named people who work with Kate, you know, who work on her charity projects.

48:05There's a podcaster who interviewed Kate. But also there's some quotes in there, anonymous sources and royal insiders and the kind of people who point towards some cooperation between Kensington Palace and the media. And so that, you know, there are loads of, you know, cover stories, even I saw on in Us Weekly that are awkward because they're very much like, when are we going to get William and, you know, King William and Queen Kate? That's going to be so great at a time when Charles has cancer and has only just got the job. You know, he waited 70 years to become king. He's been king since 2022.

48:43And already everybody's talking about when the crown's going to pass to his son, to William. But what, you know, you can't control what the media do. But what's difficult is when it seems to be coming from William and Kate themselves. Now, William is mainly the one who's guilty of this. And he has done it a number of times, talked about what everything he wants to change, what it's going to be like when he's going to be king. Right after Charles' coronation, there were stories in the media saying, oh, when William has his coronation, it will be totally different. It's like the brook is your father, and he's barely got on the throne.

49:17He's barely put the crown on. On that occasion, literally, he put the crown on a day ago, or whatever it was, a couple of days earlier. Already, it's talked about when it will move from Charles to William. Now, this particular example here, I think, was probably a genuine accident. but the piece in the Times magazine was about what Kate would be like as Queen. Now, as Queen Consort, not as a reigning Queen like Queen Elizabeth II, like Queen Consort in the same way that Camilla is the current Queen Consort. Now, my personal view on this is that predominantly the Queen Consort goes about doing things in much the same way as they did before they were Queen.

49:56You know, like when Camilla was the Duchess of Cornwall, she did do much the same stuff you just the only difference is you get drawn in as the kind of the consort to the king to a load of kind of constitutional stuff state stuff you have a bigger role in state visits and things like that um but you know broadly speaking it's not that different to being the princess of wales which is what kate currently is so it's kind of a an odd concept to me anyway. But to ask what kind of queen will she be? It's absolutely valid to ask what type of king William will be, as long as you don't do too much of it, because the king is in charge, but the consort is not in charge anyway.

50:40So slightly old concept to begin with, but need to say, what set the cat among the pigeons, I think, was actually the headline that was placed on the magazine cover. So this is the Times magazine is the colour supplement that goes inside the newspaper. So it's not like its own separate magazine. And the headline on the cover was, Arise Queen Kate, the princess's friends and palace insiders on how she will change the royal family. And then the online headline read, Kate will be a queen who really listens. And that's in quotes by palace insiders. Now that quote is actually not from a palace insider.

51:15That quote was from a podcaster who is named actually, and I'll read the full quote in a minute, But it makes it sound basically like Kate's Kensington Palace staff, her aides, are going out and saying, Kate's going to be, A, a better queen than Camilla, but also, B, you know, it's like, it's, we've been told in the media, we've been reminded that too much speculation about how long Charles' reign will be, when succession will happen, how much time he might have left, is really insensitive. Like the bloke has cancer. He's still receiving treatment for cancer. Everything seems to me to be going well.

51:56The palace are very chipper and upbeat and happy. They don't have this dark cloud hanging over them like they did in the final days of Queen of the Second's life. So ostensibly, everything seems to be going well. Charles has actually reduced his cancer treatment in 2026. But needless to say, the bloke does have cancer. I get asked all the time, like, is it really going well? Like, did they reduce his cancer, that there's treatment because actually that's a sign that things are going badly and my answer to that is always the same like there is absolutely no sign whatsoever that things are going badly all the signs point towards things going well but needless to say like it does strike me as slightly distasteful to be speculating about the end of a reign when that means the death of the king and when the king has cancer and hypothetically to a lot of ordinary people who don't have that insight of speaking to the king's staff, you know, to ordinary people, it's totally hypothetically possible that the king could die soon.

52:52Now, I don't think he will because of my interpersonal experiences of talking to people at the palace, but ordinary people don't have those experiences to bring to bear to try to work out what's going on for themselves. And so that's what makes it really awkward. And, you know, to say that Kate will change the monarchy when she becomes queen, to me is a really odd concept. There is nothing. If Kate's somebody who's going to change the monarchy, fair enough. I'm not trying to argue against Kate. I think Kate's great. A lot of her projects are really great. Her early years project is really great.

53:26But also, there is nothing stopping Kate from changing the monarchy right now. And there is no particular reason why being Queen Consort will give her some new power to change the monarchy after succession. To me, it just doesn't work that way. And I don't understand where that comes from. So let's talk about some of what was actually included in this article. And then also I wanted to talk you through some of the reaction to it as well, because that is probably in a way the big thing. The particular quote in the online headline comes from this woman called Giovanna Fletcher, who runs the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast.

54:01Fans of Kate may well remember that Kate was a guest on that show back in 2020, but also Giovanna Fletcher is a podcaster. I do this podcast. Podcasters do need to promote their podcasts. And so I can well believe that Giovanna Fletcher might well have agreed to speak to the Times without needing sign-off from the palace. Like a dresser or a stylist or somebody like that would probably need sign-off from the palace in order to speak to the media. But Giovanna Fletcher is probably somebody who wouldn't consider themselves to have to ask permission to speak to a journalist. So this is what she actually said.

54:38She's full of heart. I think she'll be a queen who really listens, who leans in, who's very aware of what's going on, like the king with the king's trust. I think the Prince and Princess of Wales are going into it with their eyes completely open. I don't feel like it's us v them. We have to work together as a society to make that change happen, and I think they get it. They understand things, and so for that reason, I think it will be a welcome change. Now, to be honest with you, reading that, I think that's totally fine and valid. She said something that's fairly uncontroversial, actually, like really kind of vanilla and positive.

55:16I don't think Giovanna Fletch will have in any way thought that she was being even remotely mischievous about the kind of interpersonal relationships of the monarchy. But the tricky bit is that when you turn that into the headline, Kate will be a queen who really listens by Palace Insiders. It makes it sound like somebody at Kensington Palace is implicitly suggesting that Camilla and maybe, who knows, maybe even Queen Elizabeth II, were not queens who really listened. And that's not actually what the copy says. I don't necessarily think that these kind of issues are actually the fault of the reporter who wrote the story either, for what it's worth.

55:54I mean, they're about the headline writing. But I do think it's awkward. You know, royals are competitive with each other at the best of times and can be jealous. I mean, I think that's the truth of it. This is a drum that Harry has banged repeatedly, but I think it is as true of him as it is of the other royals, you know, who he has kind of accused of behaving in a slightly jealous or competitive way. I think it's true of all of them. And they compete for attention in the kind of news economy too. And I do think that this will have struck a bit of a bum note at Buckingham Palace. And the fact that there has been some cooperation on the part of palace spokespeople.

56:35Well, who knows? Maybe it's not. But unnamed sources described, in fact, one of them is described as an aid. So, you know, there has been some cooperation, clearly. Now, cooperation does not equal control. And Kensington Palace will have had no control over the cover headline or the online headline to this story. And no doubt, all they were trying to do, actually, was to just get some publicity for Kate's charity campaigns, which are good campaigns. And so they haven't done anything wrong in that respect. But part of the other thing that has been done is that we can partly infer that this is awkward because we just get so much of this kind of framing about what will it be like when William's king from William, not actually particularly from Kate historically in the past, but from William.

57:25So, you know, there was another, there were reports in the Sunday Times, when was this? This was back in June, as recently as June, suggesting that, you know, when William comes to the throne, it will be an evolution, not a revolution, and all the things he's going to change, and how he wants to have even more impact. William, when he went out to South Africa with the Earthshot Prize a couple of years ago, talks about how, you know, what he wanted to change. Now, you know, he's talked before about how he wants the monarchy to be more impactful. And what sticks in the teeth for me a little bit is a couple of things, right?

58:02So one, as I've said already, it's so soon into Charles' reign. And actually, Charles has racked up some wins. You know, there's tech prosperity deal with Trump that Britain signed. Charles played an instrumental role in that. And he's played such an instrumental role on the global stage in terms of diplomacy with America over the past year. and we never imagined that would happen. That was a big win for Charles early in his reign. But needless to say, he's chalked up properly kind of three years. He's in his fourth year of his reign. And nobody knew whether he would be a success at all as king.

58:37Everybody kind of felt like, well, people love the queen, but it will be different when the king arrives. And actually, in some sections of society, that's true. But Charles has probably also been more successful than people realised. Yet he does need, you know, he's got problems. He needs to win back young people. Young people are turning against the monarchy. Overall approval ratings for the royals are down based on what they were before. You know, he's not at the point where he's going to get abolished anytime soon, but he's had this massive scandal with Andrew to deal with. And it just feels slightly unfair and unkind to me to just be constantly saying, ah, well, when I come along, it's all going to be different.

59:13And some credit to William. Actually, it sounds like from the noises coming out of the political class, from the noises coming out of Westminster, William may well have been a driving force behind some of the drive to strip Andrew of his titles and get control of the Andrew situation. And so absolutely credit where it's due on that particular score. But needless to say, also, like, I think the one that was most striking to me was the one I already mentioned after the coronation. Like, just let the guy have some time to be king and enjoy it without it feeling a little bit like you're yapping at his heels to take over.

59:48so that's one that to me that is actually probably the most awkward thing I mean I think some of the public reaction was more along the lines of whether it was offensive to Camilla but to me I actually think it's more about it just being another example of the Walesers pitching themselves as being better than Charles and Camilla. The other awkwardness of this whole thing about wanting to have more impact is that actually, first of all, Charles developed this whole idea that the royal family members engaged in social action causes. So through what was originally the Prince's Trust is now the King's Trust, he was the first royal family member to set up his own charity with a name above the door that effectively campaigned on a social cause that had the risk of being seen to be aligned with socially progressive politics.

1:00:39And obviously, you know, Earthshot prize climate change it's walking in Charles's footsteps um that's wearing William's big climate prize one of his biggest biggest flagship projects um and uh I don't think that William has given Charles enough credit for that so then what is William going to have more impact I don't know that he is like he's setting the bar higher than Charles set the bar but impact is the hardest thing in the modern world. So William wants to help solve climate change, but will he have an impact? I mean, you know, nothing William can do will stop Trump saying, drill, baby, drill, and capturing Maduro and getting American oil companies into Venezuela.

1:01:23Like Charles cannot change these things. Charles cannot make big Saudi oil exporting countries, or Middle Eastern, sorry, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, you know, these massive oil exporting countries stop exporting oil. Like he can't and so he doesn't have the power to stop climate change and so will he have more impacts than charles well he will not be the defining force that stops climate change and so therefore why even create the comparison like you can argue it both ways there's no way that william's going to get to a point where he can definitively clearly unambiguously unarguably say he did more to stop climate change than charles so i just think that um the walesers need to stop this thing of kind of comparing themselves and saying, we're going to be better.

1:02:08We're going to change everything for the good. I suspect that they're doing it because they want to, they're worried about this whole thing with young people going off the monarchy and want to do something about that. But I would just say what I've said many times in this podcast before, which is that people hate being told what to think. You cannot tell them you have more impact. You cannot tell them that you're going to be the queen who really listens. And you cannot tell them that you're going to be better than your father. You just have to do it and let other people say it for you. And when I say other people, I don't mean aides and podcasters who you've worked with and the people who you do charity projects with.

1:02:46I mean, you know, the public, like the public have to see it for themselves and they have to get there on their own. You cannot tell them to think that no matter how frustrating you might find it. And the reason why the monarchy is suffering with young people so badly is because cut through is really, really hard in the modern world. Demonstrating impact is really, really hard because everybody spends all their time on social media being told how terrible everything is. And so they don't care about the small difference between giving out some grant money to climate projects, which is what William is doing, versus making loads of speeches about climate change, which is what Charles did.

1:03:25There's no difference in the eyes of the public. They do not witness that difference. And if they cannot see it, they will not believe it. And they will certainly not be told that it's true. So it's, I think, they're on a hiding to nowhere. And actually better would be to just try to continue trying to find ways to just really connect with people through the work that you do, which is hard for all the reasons I just gave about cut through. But it's the only thing you can do. And, you know, getting into this slightly competitive thing with the king and queen is just not going to help anybody at all now one of the strongest reactions i think to this coverage was actually from the daily mail columnist amanda platel who you know she's one of these daily mail columnists who has started to get just a tiny little bit more confrontational in relation to kate now the mail obviously loves kate in general but um some of the economists do sometimes sound a bit of a a more hostile note.

1:04:26And she's not criticising Kate, but she is criticising the piece and seems to be saying that it was a mistake. And so I'm going to read you a little bit of what she actually wrote about it. So the headline was itself a warning and it read, be careful, Kate, you don't realise it, but your inner circle may have inadvertently stabbed you in the back. So inadvertently is obviously doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. So they're not suggesting a deliberate stab in the back. Clearly, I do not think that Kensington Palace intended the coverage to come out this way or look this way or seem like, you know, they were proclaiming the rise of Queen Kate now or anything like that.

1:05:03But I do actually think there is something in the argument Plattel puts forward. And this is what she said. Did those close long term friends of William and Kate have their approval to talk? Did Kate and William, in fact, sanction this article in the Times magazine about her intentions when she becomes queen? We may never know, but even if they did not, it is surely ill-advised of their close circle to talk about her future in this way. Kate would never have intended any slight against Camilla, of course, but I can't be the only person to think that this emphasis on her queenly qualities is a slap in the face for the present queen.

1:05:39And she added, Charles and Camilla are still working full tilt with many engagements planned in the diary for this year, including a joint official state visit to the United States. so this is the Declaration of Independence 250 events where we think Charles is going to be there probably in April and William and Kate maybe will go out in July and so Platel says there will come a time to hail the ascension or a session of King William and Queen Catherine but it is not yet it's just too soon for anyone to be cheering Arise Queen Kate and that is the bit that I think I agree with most of all which is just you know give them a break, give them a little bit a space to establish themselves as the king and queen.

1:06:21And then there will come a time when it makes total sense to do stories speculating about the next reign. But, you know, it wasn't just the mail. The Daily Beast's royalist substack, which is run by Tom Sykes, reported some jealousy on Charles' part. The headline was Queen Kate Angers Jealous Charles. And the piece read that a glossy Times profile hailing Catherine as queen has sharpened royal rivalries and highlighted an awkward reality for the palace. Kate now outshines Camilla by a country mile. I mean, Kate, I think, has kind of always outshined Camilla in no small part because of the complicated history about Camilla and Diana.

1:07:01But the key thing really is, and it's fine in a way, it's fine for Kate to outshine Camilla. But Kensington Palace need to make sure that they're perceived to be being fair to the king and queen and sensitive to the kind of difficult aspects of it. But, you know, I feel a bit sorry for Kate. She has had a difficult time, but she was caught up this week in the Grok AI images scandal. So Grok is Elon Musk's AI, artificial intelligence platform. It's embedded into Twitter. So you can just tag at Grok and ask it to do stuff and it will do weird things. But actually Ofcom, which is Britain's communications regulator, regulates TV, the internet, social media platforms, that kind of thing, has sent like an urgent warning to Elon Musk that Grok has been creating sexualized images of children in response to user prompts and also de-clothing famous women, including the Princess of Wales.

1:08:00So that is obviously terrible. I sincerely hope that Grok deals with that. There is this suggestion that they might have allowed things to get out of hand in order to kind of get attention and then now will slam the door shut now that they've been challenged by a regulator but it should never have happened and you know AI is going to be incredibly powerful but it does its power does need to be constrained so that it doesn't do harm everything I'm hearing at the moment is along the lines that I don't actually think that Kensington Palace are going to kick up a big stink about this Kate was photographed a sunbathing topless back in was it 2012 I think and while she was on holiday in France in a private chateau the photographer was standing on a hill nearby and was able to aim the very very long lens in the direction of the swimming pool they could just see over the wall and Kate had been sunbathing topless and so they got these pictures which were published in French Closer magazine a women's magazine in France now William and Kate flew off the handle about that.

1:09:02They sued successfully the magazine and said that this was basically a terrible invasion of the princess's privacy. But I think since Kate hasn't actually been directly involved in this, like she didn't experience it, it wasn't really her, it was an artificially generated image, I think that they're just going to, for now, let Ofcom deal with it. I'm sure that they're very concerned about it, and very worried about it, not least of all because of what it means for the future. And they'll be worried about what it's like for their children when their children are grown up. But it doesn't sound like they're going to sue Elon or anything like that at this particular stage.

1:09:40And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report. Be sure to join me every week when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal. Until next time, I'm Jack Royston. Thanks for listening and a courtesy to you all.

1:09:56The Royal Report with Jack Royston is a member of the Trust Project.