The world’s most unsuitable trade envoy? On top of everything else, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was a bore

There’s a whole world of people who learned of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest not with shock or horror but with a sense of, “Why did it take this long?”

For those whose eyes skim over any headline with “royal” or “former royal”, a brief summary of facts: on February 19 – Andrew’s 66^th birthday – Thames Valley Police conducted a raid on two English properties and left again with a man in their custody, arrested on suspicion of “misconduct in public office”. The man, or more correctly, man-child, is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, once the late Queen’s favoured child and more recently outed as the village idiot he’s long been suspected to be.

Andrew, until last year the Duke of York but now stripped by his elder brother, King Charles, of all titles and royal privileges, denies the chickens now roosting from his long association with the late pedo financier, Jeffrey Epstein. The release of the “Epstein Files” by the US Department of Justice has revealed numerous emails between the former prince and the late sex offender. Already in the frame for allegations concerning his engagements with girls procured by Epstein, the latest tranche appears to show Andrew looped Epstein in on sensitive intel when, for 10 baffling years, he was the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment. It should be noted Andrew has long denied any wrongdoing.

Andrew’s rise, drift, grift and fall once again underscores that nepotism is odious enough before you factor in the privileges of fortunes bestowed by royal birth. Without the benefit of any kind of Commerce 101 study, let alone a stint in the lowliest ranks of trade diplomacy, the former helicopter pilot and Royal Navy commander left the service he was actually qualified for, floated around for a bit, then strings presumably pulled, refashioned himself as a trade envoy. This involved high-level meetings over tea in fine china cups with politicians and mandarins around the world, gracing their presence with his royal being, waving the flag for Britannia and all that.

There are some born to great privilege who take their inheritance and better it. Rupert Murdoch turned the small newspaper business of his father into a global behemoth. But he also ended up in court in 2024 when three of his four first-and-second family offspring challenged his intention to leave the empire in the charge of their brother, Lachlan. It cost him billions to get out of that one. Few, though, have managed to grind both the family name and considerable chunks of fortune into dust in the style of Andrew.

It was in the employ of the Murdochs that I had the misfortune to spend a very close hour with the then-Prince Andrew in 1988, in Australia’s bicentennial year. The place was thick with royals over the year, and I got assigned to trail after the thickest of them all, Andrew and his newish wife, Sarah Ferguson, then with her hands firmly gripping the brass ring of being the Duchess of York.

Royal tours come with a whole lot of pomp, photo ops and circumstances. The media corps were there when the Yorks as they were cut ribbons in Townsville, admired civic architecture in Brisbane and stayed awake during formalities in Canberra. Back then, there was always a formal cocktail party hosted on behalf of the travelling HRHs so they could get up close, hiding their revulsion, with the accredited media pool.

The York soiree was held at Yarralumla, the official residence of the Australian Governor-General. We were briefed by protocol officers beforehand: women were to curtsy, men to bow, the correct form of address was “Your Royal Highness” on first introduction, “sir” and “ma’am” thereafter. We were to wear formal clothing, speak when spoken to but also, relax! This is fun, kids! Oh, and it was Chatham House rules: what went on at the cocktail party stayed at the cocktail party. As it’s been decades since, I think I’m safe sharing two things that stayed with me.

Thirty or so of us – Australian media, the pack of Brits who followed royals from the Mall to Gstaad to Mt Gambier – were scrubbed up and milling about in a reception room at Yarralumla, overlooking very pretty gardens.

Enter the Yorks. We duly bobbed and nodded and mumbled our pleased-to-meet-yous as briefed. Once the receiving line was over, Andrew and Sarah mingled, guided around the room by aides. First, the Duchess made a beeline for one of the newspaper journalists who had been particularly cutting about her wardrobe choices.

In her earliest days of “being royal”, without the sense of chic that blessed her sister-in-law, Diana, and having had a baby only six weeks before the Australian tour (Beatrice, left in the UK with Nanny while Sarah waved and cut ribbons Downunder), she had turned to the Queen and Queen Mother’s couturier of choice, Hardy Amies, for her tour wardrobe. The result was a vivacious 28-year-old lamb dressed as mutton, as the Sydney Morning Herald noted in words to that effect.

“How dare you,” she hissed at the Herald writer, who literally took a step backwards. Sarah didn’t hold back. The writer’s words were hurtful, spiteful and lacked understanding that she had just had a baby, etc. Witness to this, I could only think, ‘Shit, they read everything,’ while wracking my brain to see if I’d filed anything that would get me such a dressing-down. Having had her say, Sarah moved on and we sipped our gins and tonic quietly. Then it was Andrew’s turn.

Presented with a small group of maybe four of us, Andrew’s line of cocktail party banter was abysmal. Where his mother had a few reliable, brief conversational gambits – most famously, ‘’have you come far?” – No 2 son had none. There was some vagueness about the weather – yes sir, it is indeed hot – and then some probing about our status at this event. “So, you’re journalists, then.” Ah, yes sir, that’s why we were invited to this reception for travelling media. “Ah. So, you can all type.” Yes sir, we’re skilled at that. “You know, on navy ships, the keyboards are all A, B, C. Sailors don’t like that QWERTY thing. Too hard.”

And with that, he was moved on to the next group, no doubt to share more interesting exchanges about shipboard computer keyboards. Or the weather.

Unless he was Dale Carnegie’d up the wazoo in the intervening years, how he was ever seen as a suitable person to impress and lure business interests on behalf of his mum’s government astonishes.

And if old habits die hard, you could also reasonably assume that he – and his ex-wife but still close pal and fellow Epstein sycophant – are reading every word about them.

Kirsty Cameron is the editor of the NZ Listener.