It is the year 2019. And we are talking about the sweat glands of a member of the British royal family, the beloved second son of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England. We have already talked extensively about his fat fingers. Now we’ve moved onto his sweat glands. So next time some posh f-ck tries to tell you what fork to use at dinner and what’s considered good etiquette and whether or not you should cross your legs, remind them that Prince Andrew’s fat fingers and sweat glands were discussed on television and eat with your goddamn fingers.
But we begin by giving credit where credit is due – just as we did when Gayle King interviewed R Kelly earlier this year - with big ups to Emily Maitlis who worked her ass off and showed her work as she landed the biggest interview of her career. Emily wrote about her experience in a piece published today in the Times detailing the intense and meticulous preparation she and her colleagues put into the exclusive that included hours of mock interviewing, memorisation, fact-checking, timeline coordination, and good old fashioned research. She was ready. She was relentless. She did her job.
Could the same be said for Prince Andrew and his team?
Jason Stein, the PR strategist who was hired by Andrew to help him through this crisis, resigned from his post after less than a month, reportedly because he was opposed to the interview in the first place. Basically he didn’t want this on his resumé – which tells you that he knew what would happen would be so damaging, he felt certain that he shouldn’t be professionally associated with it. Good decision. They should have listened to him. Clearly Jason Stein knows some things. And, clearly, Prince Andrew’s team ignored him and pushed ahead anyway…
And that’s where we should start – with the incompetence, not just on Andrew’s part (we’ll get there) but on the part of his advisors, the people working at Buckingham Palace who thought this would be the solution. Because even if, sure, it wasn’t up to them and Andrew couldn’t be talked out of it, at the very least, the VERY F-CKING LEAST, you make sure that at some point, whatever comes out of his mouth is an expression, however insincere, of sympathy for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Right?
It’s the MINIMUM. You write it for him. You make him memorise it. You impress upon him the importance of delivering those lines, even if they sound rehearsed, they have to be uttered, they have to show up during the conversation.
And it didn’t happen.
He was given multiple opportunities by Emily Maitlis to share his regret or guilt, perfect opportunities to say that he felt for the victims, that it’s unacceptable what Jeffrey Epstein did to them – and he completely missed it…because, of course, he was thinking only of himself. As he does.
But this is my point about the advisors, the courtiers within Buckingham Palace working for Prince Andrew – are they good at their jobs? For all the criticism that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have taken for not collaborating with palace staffers…
CAN YOU BLAME THEM?!?
Would YOU work with these people?
Remember, there have been leaks flying all over the place originating from inside the palace against Harry and Meghan for the better part of two years. And there has to be overlap between the people in Prince Andrew’s household and whoever the f-ck has been leaving the Sussexes out to dry. So of course House Sussex would want to distance themselves from that f-cksh-t for that reason…
But they probably, also, have distanced themselves from these people because, quite simply, it’s amateur hour over there. They don’t know what they’re doing. These judgy assholes who got all pearl-clutchy about the propriety in Meghan Markle guest-editing British Vogue sent their prince out to be interviewed by a f-cking badass journalist and got their asses handed to them at Buckingham Palace.
