Will Andrew bring down the monarchy?

0:00Helen Pidd:This is The Guardian.

0:07Andrew Lownie:Today, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the monarchy?

0:16Andrew Lownie:It's a week now since the man formerly known as Prince Andrew was arrested at Sandringham on the morning of his 66th birthday. The former Prince Andrew has tonight been released under investigation from a police station in Norfolk, where he has spent the day in custody following his arrest this morning. While police continue to investigate whether he committed misconduct in a public office, MPs voted on Tuesday to release files relating to his appointment as a UK trade envoy at the start of the millennium. They did not pull their punches.

0:47Helen Pidd:A man on a constant self-aggrandising and self-enriching hustle. A rude, arrogant and entitled man who could not distinguish between the public interest which he said he served and his own private interest.

1:02Andrew Lownie:Meanwhile, the royal family are trying to keep busy. The king went to London Fashion Week.

1:07Helen Pidd:Good afternoon, Your Majesty. Do you have any reaction to the arrest of your brother, sir? Your Majesty, how are you feeling after your brother's arrest?

1:15Andrew Lownie:And the future king went to the BAFTAs. On the red carpet, conversation turned to Hamnets, the tearjerker about Shakespeare's only son. William said he couldn't face it. Hi, you need to be in a quiet state. You'll be in a calm state where I'm not. You need to be in quite a calm state to watch it, he said. And he wasn't at the moment. It was a tiny window into the pressure Prince William is feeling, thanks to his wayward uncle. But can the royals really be so shocked at all the allegations being levelled at Andrew, when they, and the late Queen, seem to have missed so many opportunities to nip his behaviour in the butt.

1:55Andrew Lownie:One man who knows more than most about these missed opportunities is Andrew's biographer, Andrew Loney.

2:02Helen Pidd:I mean, clearly members of the family, including King Charles, knew about Andrew's activities. They were warned about his abuse of his royal position to make money for himself. I mean, that was appearing in the papers 15 years ago, and they chose to do nothing about it.

2:17Andrew Lownie:Since Andrew's arrest, Loney has been inundated with even more claims about who knew what about the Playboy Prince.

2:24Helen Pidd:It's been crazy since Thursday. I mean, I think at one point I had 1 ,200 emails I still hadn't read and I've been working from 6 in the morning till 2 in the morning. I think what's gratifying is to see other people standing up and saying, you know, the monarchy needs to modernise and reform. So I'm no longer, I think, a lone voice and others feel as strongly as I do that for the monarchy to survive, it has to adapt.

2:49Andrew Lownie:Before too long, the weight of the royal family will fall on William's shoulders. But with a potential prosecution to come, and the airing of all the dirty laundry that that will entail, can he restore the family reputation? From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, the fallout from the royal arrest.

3:14Andrew Lownie:Andrew Loney, you've written a biography of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor called Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which involved, I think, you asking 3 ,000 people, not all of whom replied, about the prince. So I think it's fair to say that you are a scholar of him and his lifetime of scandals. This episode is going to go out a week after Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. Did you ever think it was going to come to this?

3:39Helen Pidd:No, of course not. I just sought to write a biography, the best I could do. I spent four years researching it. I thought it would draw attention to his sexual and financial misdemeanors, but I didn't expect any impact. And to be honest, the book came out in August and we didn't have people knocking on his door and taking him in for questioning. The tipping point has been the new Epstein revelations in the last few weeks, which of course have confirmed all the things that I said and people didn't believe six months ago. So that's very gratifying that my sources proved to be accurate. And it is exciting that a book can have some sort of impact.

4:15Andrew Lownie:Yeah. And The Arrest, of course, is related to Andrew's position as a UK trade envoy, a role that he held from 2001 until 2011. And I find it quite curious, actually, that he was given a job like that at a time when he was already considered a bit of a liability, wasn't he? Like, all throughout my childhood in the 90s, he was the Playboy Prince. He was Randy Andy.

4:36Helen Pidd:The Queen called her second son Andrew Albert Christian Edward, but his nicknames give a better clue to his personality. Randy Andy is the best known. The Prince has a practiced eye for the ladies, and his romantic adventures have been well publicized. Is it very difficult for you to

4:52Andrew Lownie:meet a girl and to, I mean, ask for a telephone number, for example, and know that that person perhaps is terrified of all the press attention that you get?

5:01Helen Pidd:Yes, I think to a certain extent they probably are. But if you remember, I didn't get your telephone number.

5:08Andrew Lownie:Can you just help us understand why he was given this job? And was it a real role or just sort of a pretend one to keep him out of trouble in some way?

5:16Helen Pidd:Well, it was a real role. It's a role the Duke of Kent had had. It's a role that the future Edward VIII had had, in some ways using the soft power of the monarchy to reach places that politicians couldn't reach. I mean, the Liberals have now called for a debate to get all the papers to show how that appointment was made, because, as you say, people had some idea of what he was like. But it was pushed through by the Queen and basically very hard to turn down anything the Queen wanted. She wanted a son who basically had run out of road in the Navy to have a big job, and they thought that this would be a big job.

5:48Helen Pidd:Britain's Duke of York, Prince Andrew, is travelling to Egypt this weekend to co-chair the World Economic Forum on the Middle East. like Davos earlier in the year. All the movers and shakers are due to be there from President Bush and Egyptian President Mubarak to Tony Blair. For the last seven years, he's been around the world travelling, promoting British business. 25 countries in one year last year, I think. It was against the wishes of King Charles, pushed through by Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, both of whom, of course, figure in the Epstein papers. But I think the problem was there was no proper supervision and he was kind of left to do what he wanted.

6:26Helen Pidd:And he kind of took advantage of the situation to exactly do as he wanted, chase women, play golf and make money.

6:32Andrew Lownie:And so you say that the Prince of Wales, as was the king as he is now, was concerned at the time and raised his concerns. What was he worried about?

6:41Helen Pidd:I think he knew his brother. He knew his brother could be very boorish. He could put people's backs up. He was socially gauche. He thought he knew it all. And he was absolutely right. And the whole thing was kind of contained. In the end, the ambassadors didn't request Andrew because he was counterproductive. Andrew kind of imposed himself with Fergie on his coattails, trying to pick up business cards wherever she could. And he was kind of left to do his own thing. He would go to places like Thailand on the taxpayers' tab and then have what he called private time. So we'd pay for a week, basically, in effect, in some resort in Thailand.

7:16Helen Pidd:And he just took advantage of the system and he was sticking, as we know, all sorts of expenses on this, including his massages, insisting on private jets when commercial flights would do. We've heard from two former civil servants, one of whom said that he was so annoyed at Andrew's attempt to claim for massage services that he tried to block that expenses payment, but he was overruled by a more senior member of staff. Another former Whitehall official says that he was shocked at the extent of what was described as Andrew's lavish lifestyle. And it was all sort of rubber stamped and sent through.

7:57Helen Pidd:So it's not entirely Andrew's fault. He worked the system, but the system allowed him to behave like this.

8:03Andrew Lownie:And there's one anecdote in your book where apparently Andrew's staff, while he was abroad, was often requesting that attractive women be invited to events, to which one consul replied, I'm a diplomat, not a pimp. So it was fairly blatant, was it, his behaviour when he was abroad?

8:20Helen Pidd:Yes, it was, absolutely. And numerous stories of him veering off from shaking hands with VIPs to talk to a pretty girl. Sometimes he just disappeared with someone he'd picked up. He was always going to nightclubs with girls being provided in the VIP room. the ambassador sometimes lost sight of him. He would stay in hotels rather than in the ambassador's residence, particularly ones with nice nightclubs that he could go to. So yeah, he used this as just an opportunity to pick up women. And of course, there are plenty of women who are quite happy to be picked up by the son of the Queen.

8:53Andrew Lownie:Indeed. And was there a specific trip that Andrew went on where we know now that it didn't go to plan behind the scenes and you had essentially diplomats tearing their hair out about his behaviour?

9:05Helen Pidd:Oh, countless trips. I mean, there was a whole file at the Foreign Office of complaints from ambassadors, though they learnt that if they did complain, it might jeopardise their career. But, you know, people eventually gave up complaining. I mean, I've got stories in the book of, you know, for example, a diplomatic incident with the Sultan of Oman because Andrew was trying to catch money off him. People in the Gulf complained that he was trying to sell his house Sunninghill to them. So yeah, numerous complaints and nothing was done. I mean, some of these complaints were appearing in the papers from ambassadors.

9:36Helen Pidd:So yeah, no one could be on any doubt that this guy was a liability to Britain.

9:50Andrew Lownie:And as there is now an ongoing police investigation into whether Andrew committed misconduct in a public office while doing that job, we do need to be a little bit careful about how we talk about all of this. And we should, of course, stress that Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing. But we know, of course, that his arrest was prompted by the release of the Epstein files. Can you just remind us, what were the key allegations contained in the files relating to how Andrew behaved when he was trade envoy that raised questions of whether or not he broke the law?

10:20Helen Pidd:Well, there were a series of stories, many of them which were actually in my book and didn't seem to make much impact in August. He was looking for investment opportunities in Helmand province just after the war there, when troops were still, I think, serving there. I mean, just basically everything that came across his desk, almost immediately it was sent off to someone like Epstein. And then there was almost a quid pro quo. He would then ask Epstein for some money for Fergie's bills. So this was in effect selling information. There's also claims now, which I believe, that he was betraying military and diplomatic secrets.

10:50Helen Pidd:So there is actually a more serious charge that could be levelled against him of treason.

10:54Andrew Lownie:Goodness. And as you say, there were concerns raised about Andrew's appointment as trade envoy at the time and we may soon learn more about that appointment after MPs voted this week to release paperwork relating to how he actually got that job.

11:08Helen Pidd:Can there be many people more symbolic of the rot that eats away at the British establishment than the former Duke of York and special trade envoy?

11:16Andrew Lownie:How damaging do you think that could be both for Andrew and the rest of the royal family as well as for the Labour government at the time.

11:24Helen Pidd:I mean, I've been trying for five years to get access to the files on this time as a trade envoy, and they've used every exemption possible to stop me having them. I think the shredders are working 24 hours at the moment in Whitehall. I don't think we're going to get any paperwork that will have a smoking gun on anything. So good news for the government, good news for the royal family. But the royal family are clearly being drawn into this. I mean, clearly members of the family, including King Charles, knew about Andrew's activities. they were warned about his abuse of his royal position to make money for himself I mean that was appearing in the papers 15 years ago and they chose to do nothing about it and so I think they have to take some responsibility here they can't say sorry this is all news to us and we'll deal with it because they've knew about it and didn't deal with it.

12:11Andrew Lownie:Yes and yet the king put out a statement last week saying I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. So he doesn't even say about my brother, very much distancing himself from his brother. Have they always had a bad relationship, these two, or has it just worsened over the decades?

12:31Helen Pidd:Well, the relationship, I think, was not too bad to start with. I mean, Charles is 12 years older. He treated him very much as a younger brother. I mean, he's a very kind man, and he would write children's stories and read them out to Andrew, but they're very different temperaments. I mean, Charles is intellectually curious, he's sensitive, thoughtful, modest, self-deprecating, whereas Andrew is bumptious, pompous, arrogant, stupid, has no hinterland. So there's not much in common between them. And of course, Andrew's created huge reputational damage for the monarchy. He's been a pain at home.