How Prince Andrew authored his own downfall by deciding to go public

In less than a week, he went from scant coverage of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein to stepping down from royal duties amid an unprecedented maelstrom of bad publicity.

In the light of Wednesday night’s announcement, it seems preposterous that the Duke of York had expected his hour-long interview on Newsnight to “draw a line” under the sex scandal that has now engulfed him.

Following years of scrutiny over his links to the billionaire financier, this was the 59-year-old’s opportunity to set the record straight on why he stayed with the convicted paedophile after his release from prison – as well as addressing repeated allegations that he had sex with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a 17-year-old in 2001.

Yet, having overruled a PR adviser who suggested a no-holds barred grilling by the BBC’s Emily Maitlis was “a bad idea”, the Duke launched headlong into what is now widely regarded as the most ill-advised royal interview since Prince Charles admitted adultery to Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994.

Jaws dropped across the UK as the prime-time Saturday night programme revealed the father of two to have suffered from a condition that rendered him unable to sweat, and as an unlikely patron of the Woking branch of Pizza Express.

Appearing to live up to his ­reputation as arrogant, pompous and over-entitled, the Queen’s second son left viewers dumbstruck as he justified his friendship with Epstein as “very useful”, saying he had no regrets about it. Asked why he had stayed at Epstein’s New York mansion, he said it was a “convenient place to stay”.

Equally convenient was his amnesia over even meeting Ms Giuffre. The photograph of him with his arm around her could not have been taken in the way suggested because “public displays of affection are not something I do”. He couldn’t have been sweating because his Falklands War experience had left him physically unable to. He couldn’t have bought a drink at Tramp nightclub because he didn’t know where the bar was – and besides, he was having a pizza with his eldest daughter, Princess Beatrice, that night.

Reframing himself as the master of understatement, he admitted he had “let the side down” over his continued association with a child abuser, but made matters worse with his seeming inability to empathise with Epstein’s victims, let alone express sorrow for the way they had been treated.

The killer line came when he said Epstein’s predatory behaviour was “unbecoming”. “Unbecoming?” asked Maitlis. “He was a sex offender.”

Rather than ending speculation about the Duke’s behaviour, the programme only served to revive the controversy and generate fresh questions about his various “alibis”.

By the time the public had digested the car crash they had witnessed, the media pile-on had already began in earnest. The Queen’s former press spokesman, Dickie Arbiter, described the Duke as “not very bright”. Public relations expert Mark Borkowski called it “a masterclass in PR disaster”.

As Epstein’s alleged victims began calling for Andrew to tell the ongoing FBI and civil investigations “everything he knows”, journalists in the UK and the US started poring over every detail to find inconsistencies.

Although the Duke had reportedly told his mother at church on Sunday morning that the interview had gone well, by Monday there were already suggestions that he may have to retire from public life. The notion that he considered the interview to have been a case of “mission accomplished” only appeared to further irritate charities and sponsors who by now were beginning to get cold feet.

Even Buckingham Palace appeared to be distancing itself from the furore with a statement released indicating that the 93-year-old monarch had been made aware of the interview, but neglecting to confirm that she had approved it. One palace insider summed up the mood: “Internally, this is being seen as a f--- up.”

In The Times on Monday, Maitlis said the Duke had said he must “seek approval from higher up”. Amid reports that his private office had been “operating in a silo”, the blame was beginning to shift to his longstanding private secretary, Amanda Thirsk.

Tuesday brought yet more misery as KPMG, the accounting giant, withdrew its support for the Duke’s entrepreneurship scheme Pitch@Palace, while other partners placed their relationship with the initiative under review and removed their logo from its website.

It came as Outward Bound announced its trustees were meeting to discuss whether the Duke should remain as its patron as the Palace was forced to deny that he had used the phrase “n----- in the woodpile” during a discussion about trade policy in 2012.

Students at the University of Huddersfield launched a move to remove the Duke as chancellor, arguing that they should not be represented “by a man with ties to organised child sexual exploitation and assault”.

In Los Angeles, Gloria Allred, a lawyer for Epstein’s alleged victims held a press conference to introduce “Jane Doe 15”, a woman who claimed to have been trafficked and abused by him when she was 15.

Criticising the Duke’s denial that he knew of Epstein’s crimes, Allred increased pressure on the Duke to testify, saying that he should have asked: “Why are these girls here?”

It came as The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Duke had been named in secret documents detailing explosive new allegations against Epstein as a US judge was preparing to unseal more than 3,000 pages of new evidence.

We now know that the Duke spent most of Tuesday in conversation with his mother, the Queen, and his brother, the Prince of Wales, who is currently on tour in New Zealand with the Duchess of Cornwall.

On Wednesday, the Queen’s 72nd wedding anniversary, the monarch summoned her “favourite” son to a meeting at Buckingham Palace as yet more reports emerged of businesses and charities cutting ties.

News that a planned visit to flood-stricken parts of South Yorkshire had been pulled at the last minute appeared to seal the Duke’s fate.

According to royal sources, it was the Queen who told her son to step down from public duties “for the foreseeable future” – rather than the other way round, as suggested in his three-paragraph statement.

Finally, the apology came: “I continue to unequivocally regret my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein. His suicide has left many unanswered questions, particularly for his victims, and I deeply sympathise with everyone who has been affected and wants some form of closure. I can only hope that, in time, they will be able to rebuild their lives.”

But it was all too little, too late.