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The claims in the 2019 Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis about his unusual medical condition and a visit to a children’s party at Pizza Express in Woking astonished viewers and sparked a backlash.

Ms Maitlis has revealed the duke discussed these answers with her before the “jaw-dropping” TV appearance and asked if they “would be interesting to hear”.

She said: “At the time, the specifics seemed almost comical. But now, suddenly, they feel deadly serious.”

Ms Maitlis, 51, believes the information Andrew gave – which his lawyers have since said he can provide no evidence to support – is now crucial to the sexual assault case he faces in the US.

A judge is deciding whether to allow Virginia Giuffre, a trafficking victim of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to pursue her civil case against the duke.

Ms Giuffre, 38, is suing the prince, claiming he sexually assaulted her when she was 17 and a minor in some US states. Andrew, 61, has consistently denied the allegations.

The duke has claimed the case should be dismissed because Ms Giuffre, right, agreed a £370,000 settlement with Epstein in 2009 that ruled out legal action against associates. The financier was found dead in jail while awaiting trial in 2019.

But Judge Lewis Kaplan told a court in New York on Tuesday that at this stage he “must assume the truth” that the duke forced “a child to have sexual intercourse” with him. He said a jury would determine what was true if it came to trial.

Andrew told Ms Maitlis in the TV interview that his inability to sweat was the result of an overdose of adrenalin after getting shot during the Falklands conflict.

This challenged Ms Giuffre’s claim he was sweaty at a nightclub. He also denied he slept with her, saying it could not have taken place because he was at a branch of Pizza Express with his daughter Princess Beatrice.

Ms Maitlis said: “Prince Andrew came to Newsnight because he wanted to clear his name. He believed things had been said about him that he could disprove. And he had his defence ready. The answers he gave on camera may have seemed astonishing, jaw-dropping even, in places.

“But, bizarrely, I had been expecting them. We had talked through the things he wanted to say.”

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She describes in a BBC article meeting Andrew in his office and sipping tea as they discussed it.

Ms Maitlis said: “It was Prince Andrew who volunteered the information that he was ‘unable to sweat’. I remember him asking me very directly if we thought that would be interesting to hear. I said ‘yes’.

“We had asked him to explain his whereabouts on the night Ms Giuffre alleged he had danced with her in Tramp nightclub, in London. His office checked the date and told us he couldn’t have been with her because he had been at a children’s birthday party.

“The prince, in other words, had his alibi ready.”

Ms Maitlis said the interview was not designed to “catch out” the duke, but to have a record of his “version of events”.

Meanwhile, there are claims Andrew could have avoided the civil case if he had apologised. A source told the New York Post: “Virginia has always just wanted the prince to acknowledge that he did something he shouldn’t have. She wants him to apologise.”

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