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Andrew penniless? What rot, he pays just £250 rent a week for the palatial Royal Lodge

We need to talk about Prince Andrew and his ‘loyal’ ex Fergie. How come nothing they do ever brings approval? It’s all about Entitlement. And a huge dollop of appalling judgment.

 

There are reports that the King wants the pair out of Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park so badly that, come October, he will withdraw his brother’s 10-strong, £3million-a-year security detail. In other words freeze him out. That will make for interesting chat among the bagpipes and cabers during the Royal Family’s holiday beginning about now at Balmoral. Oh to be a midge on the wall.

 

I’ve been talking to my friend Andrew Lownie, the distinguished biographer and historian who is just putting the finishing touches to a new tome which deals with the scandal-packed lives of Andrew and Sarah. He is puzzled: ‘In many ways Andrew is the useful idiot; as long as he is at Royal Lodge he draws a lot of the flak away from the rest of the family.’

 

What’s more, Lownie believes all the talk of the Duke of York being penniless is nonsense. ‘He is raking in the money and could easily afford to pay for the protection.’ He must be right, the rent on Royal Lodge with its 30 rooms, swimming pool and 90 acres is £250 a week. About the same as a bedsit in Hull.

 

Under the arrangement struck between the brothers, Andrew has to pay for upkeep but there is evidence he can’t even be bothered to do that with cracks in the brickwork plainly visible.

 

Isn’t it all down to entitlement? He sees himself as the late Queen’s favourite son and he’s never had to pay for anything. He’s clearly none too bright and Sarah Ferguson is like the girl with the little curl. When she is good she is very good indeed. And when she is bad she is horrid.

 

I have known Sarah for more than 30 years and can confirm that she shares her former husband’s sense of entitlement. In spades. She craves money and is very unpredictable.


Two years ago I arranged for Sarah to meet Lownie so that she might co-operate with his book to give both sides of the story.  We gathered at Lownie’s house in Westminster and she came armed with gifts, copies of her latest book Her Heart for a Compass.

 

All went swimmingly and an hour later she dashed off to Harley Street for a dental appointment in a blur of mwah-mwahs. The chauffeured royal Range Rover was waiting outside on double yellow lines. And the outcome? A directive to friends of Andrew and Sarah not to talk to Lownie under any circumstances.

 

I’m happy to report that, despite that, his new biography, out next year, promises to be every bit as illuminatingly good as his brilliantly researched ones on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Mountbattens and Guy Burgess.

 

Fast forward to early this year. Out of the blue I got an email from Sarah saying her film production company (who knew?) wanted to make a film about my book on Toto Koopman, the former Vogue and Chanel model who became Lord Beaverbrook’s lover before joining the Italian Resistance and ending up as guest of the Nazis in a concentration camp. I was attracted to the offer because she said it came with a producer who had worked on three Oscar-winning films.

 

After much thought I signed the agreement, turning down other offers, and then while driving through narrow Berkshire lanes in torrential early summer rain, a call came in. Not from the brave Fergie but from her long-suffering and delightful right hand, Kate Waddington. The deal was off.

 

Why? All because Lownie in a podcast had been less than generous about her and her ex-husband. And, despite the fact that I knew nothing of the programme, I was damned because of my friendship with him and because I had put the two of them together. Thus proving the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished.

 

That’s the way the York-Ferguson mind works. If only the late great radio psychiatrist  Dr Anthony Clare were around today to explain. I now have another, rather better offer for the film rights so thank you Sarah.


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It appears that some of the 300,000 Afghan refugees taken in by Germany have been flying back to the Taliban hellhole for a quick break before returning to Deutschland. They are using the double-entry visa issued to the authorities when first granted asylum.

 

Germany has been hugely generous with its asylum policy and won’t even send Afghans convicted of a crime in their adopted home back to Afghanistan because it is considered so dangerous. Not any more. It’s government has opened negotiations with the Taliban to take back criminals.

 

Maybe a deal could be done to send them to Rwanda.

 

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An enterprising food outlet on the Isle of Man has offered a money-back insurance policy against seagulls stealing your fish and chips. Gulls are a menace; when I used to sea fish off Devon the buggers would surround me when bringing in the catch, so much so that one marauder swooped on a mackerel hanging from my hook as it was being brought into the boat. The result was the bird got hooked itself and trying to take a hook out of an angry flapping beast is an experience I wouldn’t want to repeat.

 

Far better are monkeys. When stopping for a coffee break on safari in South Africa one friendly little thief jumped on my shoulder, pinched a sachet of sugar and a doughnut and fled. I didn’t care about the sugar because I don’t use it. But I was looking forward that doughnut...

 

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Lunching in North Oxford I asked a friend if he knew his near neighbour Peter Hitchens (formerly of this parish.) ‘I don’t,’ was the reply, ‘but he’s known in these parts as The Angry Man.’ Is that better or worse than his Express soubriquet of Bonkers?


(Worse — Ed)


ALAN FRAME


21 August 2024