Previously: Despite Prince Andrew, the British press is still pumping out the Royal Family’s propaganda
When I was digging through the archives for the previous edition of this newsletter, I stumbled again on a Tatler profile of Prince Andrew written by Geordie Greig in 2000. It is such a grim artefact of how the now-disgraced prince’s propaganda was done in the early years of this century, and I couldn’t resist unpicking it for you.
Greig, whose family have been royal courtiers for years and whose twin sister was a lady-in-waiting for Princess Diana, was editor of Tatler at the time. He’s since been editor of the Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday, and The Daily Mail, and is currently editor-in-chief of The Independent. He’s never met a powerful person to whom he didn’t want to suck up.
In June 2000, when the Prince Andrew profile was published, Greig had been the editor of Tatler for a year. An interview with the royal alongside his ex-wife Fergie, along with cameo appearances by his children, was a big get for the society bible, which fills its pages with photos of the rich, their horses, and their equally horsey children. It was part of a concerted campaign by the monarchy to rebrand Andrew as a serious man, since he was a mere 40 at the time.
Greig opens the piece with a slobbering description of Andrew:
Recently turned 40, Prince Andrew is fitter and slimmer (by a good stone) and has a new sense of glamour. More Pierce Brosnan, less Nick Faldo. The trademark golfing sweater has been replaced by a sleek black polo-neck, and he appears nothing like the box-suited, blonde-dating, cack-humoured oaf portrayed in the tabloids over the years.
‘What can you do?’ he grins. ‘The press have their job and sometimes their own agenda. They are simply a fact of life. I just get on with things.’ And sure enough, on the first day we meet, The Sun makes front-page news of a dinner he shared at the palace with the model Caprice. ‘Of course I know Caprice,’ he says. ‘But just because I have dinner with someone who is blonde and incredibly pretty, it does not mean it should end up in the newspaper as something of any significance.’
Pierce Brosnan should have sued for that comparison, and as the profile continues, it becomes clear that Greig is not even able to hide Andrew’s fundamental nature as a “cack-humoured oaf” even as he’s attempting to show him in the best light. In 2020, the Caprice story returned to the pages of The Sun with the claim that the prince had let the model sit on the throne and let her steal a bowl from Buckingham Palace.
After dismissing other media stories about Andrew as “wrong” — without any proof besides the word of the prince himself — Greig found space for a brief mention of a name with which we’re now very familiar:
[Prince Andrew’s] shared home with Sarah and their two daughters, Princesses Beatrice, 11, and Eugenie, l0, at Sunninghill, inspires yet more press speculation about the Queen’s middle son. His profile swings between that of single man-about-town, spotted with Ghislaine Maxwell in the front row at Ralph Lauren’s show in New York, and the model of a family man, photographed on the London Eye with his ex-wife and children.
At the time, Maxwell’s public profile — following the death of her father, the corrupt media baron Robert Maxwell — was at a low. Six months after the Tatler article, in January 2001, The Evening Standard called Maxwell “Andrew’s fixer” in a story that detailed eight trips she’d taken with Andrew in the previous year, including to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The same report notes:
Ghislaine has introduced [Prince Andrew] to her one-time partner, Jefferey Epstein, 48, an immensely powerful New York property developer and financier.
It also said even then, “[Epstein’s] influence over Prince Andrew is also causing concern among Andrew’s friends and the Royal Family”.
The next section of Greig’s profile is a particularly grim read, given what we know now about Andrew’s friend Jeff and the delightful Ghislaine:
Now there is also Andrew the fundraiser. As chairman of the NSPCC Full Stop Campaign, he is trying to raise a staggering £250 million to eradicate child abuse in the UK. It is Britain’s largest single charitable fundraising target ever, and he is directing the project like a military operation, daily orchestrating a kitchen cabinet, which runs numerous subcommittees. Children – his own as well as those who suffer abuse – are the major focus of his life now.
The attempt to present a notoriously arrogant, rude, and entitled person as a paragon of virtue continues:
In our interviews – over several days, in his private apartment in Buckingham Palace, at his MoD offices in Whitehall, in St James’s Palace and at Sunninghill – he comes across as a strong-minded and unconventional young man. Articulate and forceful, he is wholly connected to Blair’s modern Britain, determined to bring about change… There’s certainly no trace of hauteur, remoteness or even noblesse oblige. ‘I am a good deal more down-to-earth than people would expect from a member of the royal family. The ivory tower is not a syndrome from which I suffer,’ he says. Surprisingly, he credits this partly to Gordonstoun – ‘a school with a far wider range of background than I might have experienced if I had gone to one or two schools in the South,’ he says, pointedly. ‘Oh yes, and don’t forget all those cold showers.’
While interviewing Andrew in a series of ivory towers, Greig buys into the prince’s claims that he’s “down-to-earth”. That said, perhaps Greig, the Eton and Oxford-educated son of Sir Carron Greig, has a different definition of “down-to-earth” than the rest of us. I suspect the editor of Tatler didn’t pause to think about what level of hauteur the prince might present to those who weren’t useful to him or whom he considered his social inferiors.
No sweat! The British media’s collusion with Fergie’s PR rehabilitation is less believable than her ex-husband’s excuses…
Though death has been no impediment to the British press in writing about Princess Diana — indeed, The Daily Express has turned to psychics to get her views on the news of the day — the other iconic tabloid princess of the 80s, Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, is still with us and entering the “living object of nostalgia” stage of her career…
Read more
4 years ago · 3 likes · Mic Wright
Other ludicrous claims in the profile that whip past without further comment include that Andrew and Fergie “often [took their daughters] to their local cinema in Bracknell” — almost as ludicrous as his future story about that Pizza Express in Woking — his repeated insistence that he was treated just like any other sailor during his time in the Royal Navy, and the implication that his daughters were “unspoilt”.
The “cack-humoured oaf” breaks through in a scene that Greig relates about meeting with charity workers:
Thirty minutes later, Andrew is again on duty, having been driven from Buckingham Palace to St James’s, where he addresses some NSPCC volunteers. One social worker tells the heartbreaking story of an abused eight-year-old from Warrington whose continual cries for help were ignored. An agony aunt from a teenage magazine lightens the mood with the news that she sometimes gets letters from children asking how to kiss. ‘How far do you put your tongue in and in which direction?’ one child asked. Not missing a beat, Andrew yells: ‘Aren’t you going to tell us?’
Doesn’t that give you the sense of a mature and sensitive man of 40 rather than a childish, hooting goon?
After indulging Andrew’s descriptions of his bucolic childhood spent in a range of palaces, Greig encourages the prince to talk about his very current, not-at-all weird living arrangements…
Is it odd still living with his mum aged 40? He laughs. ‘I may be under the same roof, but you do not get any sense of living with your mum. It takes me five minutes to get to her. It is a different house, effectively,’ he says.
… and his own parenting philosophy:
Is he a strict father? ‘No more than anyone else,’ he replies. Compared to his own father? ‘The circumstances were so different when I was a child – it is difficult to compare. My father always dispensed incredibly profound and sound advice. I appreciated that, though I did not always agree with the advice.
What advice has he given his own children? ‘I have told them. They must be good friends,’ he says, ‘so that they always have each other. It is so important for them to be able to rely on that and to be close and, so far, that’s exactly what has happened.’
After some vomitworthy interplay with his children (“‘Can I tweak your nose in this photo, papa?’ asks Eugenie. ‘No you can’t,’ he laughs…”), the profile shifts into a long section where Fergie offers some of her greatest hits, concluding with the line: “There’s nothing more wonderful than a hug.” I thought she was going to say, there’s nothing more wonderful than a cheque so that was a bit of a surprise.
The article ends on an appropriately queasy note with Andrew’s own thoughts on hugging:
Andrew agrees but is less huggy-feely. ‘Do not forget I was brought up at a time when any PDA [public display of affection] was somewhat frowned upon,’ he says, before adding with a grin: ‘Remember, it is difficult if you are wearing an Ascot hat or uniform and are on parade. It is then that you whisper, “Hey, how about later?” And once you come off parade, you give them a jolly good hug.’
Did Greig know about Andrew’s ‘play’ with Epstein at the time? I doubt it, but the profile illustrates an aspect of how royal propaganda enabled the prince’s behaviour. It paints a picture of a man enthralled by philanthropy and overflowing with charitable instincts rather than a man baby with a bed covered in teddy bears, a penchant for having young women snuck into Buckingham Palace, and an unfortunate taste for hobnobbing with autocrats, dictators, and sex offenders.
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