An eloquence of Inner Temple lawyers scanning every line will have to be drafted in if rumours are true – Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is considering a ‘tell-all’ autobiography. But if the ex-prince is genuinely considering feathering his retirement nest with a tell-all tome – will anything stop shameless ‘Air Miles Andy’ from crashing the house down around him?
When I say ‘tell-all’, there’s the first rub. Let’s face it, as Emily Maitlis and the BBC Newsnight audience will agree, Andrew is not gifted in the art of spinning a believable yarn. Andrew Lownie’s recent damning biography on Andrew, ‘Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York’, sears with scandal, sex and money depicting him as arrogant, self-seeking and in denial about his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
But if a publisher could get him to sign on the dotted line, imagine the juicy details of a lifetime at Windsor and Buckingham Palace Andrew could disgorge?
He could reveal to the world his own parents’ relationship; divulge untold nuggets from King Charles’ marriage breakdown and take us behind the scenes after the tragic death of Diana – and that’s before he gets to his own scandals.
First and foremost he’ll be terrified that the wrong printed word will land him in a great deal of trouble with the law on both sides of the Atlantic, or shatter an alibi or two.
He will also be mindful of civil action too, hence the ‘eloquence of lawyers’ – one of the legal profession’s several collective nouns along with ‘an argument, a dispute, a quarrel and a huddle’.
So before the ink is dry on the publishing contract, let alone the chapter possibly entitled ‘How I met my pal Jeffrey’, he’ll be surrounded by more men in wigs than RuPaul’s Drag Race.
So why would Andrew bother? It seems like a high-risk game.
Two words – money and arrogance. The same two words that sparked Prince Harry’s auto-hypocrisy – sorry I mean autobiography – ‘Spare’, which saw him reportedly rake in a cool £22 million for that sad waste of a forest.
You know it’s been said one tree can produce 1,000 medium-sized books. Spare sold 6 million copies worldwide. We needlessly chopped down 6,000 trees for that.
Spare, which saw Prince Harry slam the media for printing leaks – as he told the world all about private conversations he had with others, in order to sell a book and make money.
The BBC’s own review of Spare branded it “part confession, part rant and part love letter. In places it feels like the longest angry drunk text ever sent”.
If Harry will tell us all about losing his virginity behind a pub, or suffering a frost-bitten penis, imagine what Randy Andy’s own exposé could uncover?
As Andy prepares to pack his bags after Christmas and New Year at Royal Lodge for the last time and make his slow trudge for exile in Sandringham wouldn’t he be tempted to cash in for £25m?
Another shameless royal – Andrew’s great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor – made a fortune with his own book ‘A King’s Story’ in 1951, causing bitter royal rows and recriminations.
King George VI’s former private secretary Sir Alan Lascelles branded the once-abdicated king and then Duke “the meanest royal there has ever been”.
Andrew would no doubt terminally spike his guns with King Charles and kiss goodbye to his £1m-a-year allowance but he has his own inheritance from the Queen, that she gave before her death.
So as speculation is rife that Sarah Ferguson is considering finally breaking ranks to write her own tell-all, followed by a US tour of late night talk shows, it’s hardly far-fetched to think Andrew could do the same.
The only question is, once the lawyers have redacted most of the manuscript for legal reasons – will there be any pages to read?