While Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall are visiting New Zealand, another royal is in the spotlight.
Prince Andrew has given his first detailed response to allegations by an American woman that she was forced to have sex with him in 2001 - when she was just 17.
Photo: AFP
Virginia Giuffre - then Virginia Roberts - says she was flown to London by the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and was forced to have sex with the prince three times.
The Duke of York "categorically" denied having any sexual contact with the woman in an hour-long interview on BBC’s Newsnight.
“This must be the most bizarre royal interview ever perpetrated and extraordinarily set in Buckingham Palace,” says Richard Fitzwilliams a royal commentator who works with the BBC and Sky News.
The interview, which took six months negotiation between the BBC and Prince Andrew’s advisors, was self-indulgent, Fitzwilliams says.
“I mean, why now when Britain is in the middle of a crisis election? I think people will look at what we've been watching, and what I've been looking at with a certain amount of horror, as being pretty self-indulgent.
“There are serious questions here and has he answered them? Well the most extraordinary thing is that he doesn't regret his friendship with the deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”
Prince Andrew’s lack of regret is extraordinary, says Fitzwilliams.
“He only visiting him, staying there in Epstein’s Manhattan home in 2010 - that is quite extraordinary. You get the impression that he is in denial about a good deal.”
Royal correspondent Richard FitzWilliams. Photo: Anthony Dawton
During the interview the Prince says it was “honourable” to visit Epstein in New York and tell him that their friendship was over.
“Well, we had one rather extraordinary detail and that was the idea that he was being honourable …he wanted to cut off relations he said, he kept talking about the honourable and right thing to do. And his judgment was coloured by his tendency to be honourable, all this basically seems to imply that you can’t cut off contact with a convicted sex offender on the telephone.
“I mean it really is quite extraordinary. A lot of people will look at this interview and they will question his judgments.”
Fitzwillliams says he is “staggered” the palace allowed the interview to happen.
“But the facts are the lack of dignity, the lack of regret and also the lack of understanding; he might at least have emphasised and talked about the victims of Epstein with some sympathy - not a word.
“This has been constantly haunting him in recent months. He lost his job as the UK special trade envoy because of his friendship with Epstein that oddly enough did not come up in the interview.
“He was very good as a Falkland’s pilot in 1982. He was very good in the Navy, but there's no question I would say that he's completely out of his depth in certain areas and to see an interview of an hour like that with The Queen’s second son at Buckingham Palace. I never thought I would - and I thought it was bizarre.”
