Sarah Ferguson calls Prince Andrew a ‘good, kind man’

Sam McAlister, who spent months getting the interview together, recalled that the moment a member of the Queen’s staff popped in was significant, as it meant Her Majesty was aware of what was taking place.

But the former Newsnight producer has told how she was “astonished” when the late Queen Elizabeth’s head of communications did not stay to watch Prince Andrew’s interview.

The Scoops author said the staffer left before the interview with the Duke of York, who is the subject of a new two-part Channel 4 documentary airing this evening, even started.

Speaking on the Political Party podcast in July 2022, she also noted that the Newsnight team never came into contact with a lawyer acting on Andrew’s behalf, something she found “absolutely shocking”.

In November 2019, Andrew was interviewed by renowned journalist Emily Maitlis about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein where he infamously discussed visiting a Pizza Express in Woking and claimed that he could not sweat.

In the book Scoops, released last year, Ms McAlister recalled how Donal McCabe, the Communications Secretary to the Queen, arrived and was very polite.

But she told the podcast that to her “astonishment”, he left before it started.

In her book, she wrote: “After speaking to a couple of people, he leaves. Afterwards, this seems a missed opportunity — if he’d stayed, he’d have known the contents of the interview first-hand.

“Perhaps he would have realised how terribly this would play out for Andrew, for the palace, for the monarchy.”

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She continued: “Perhaps they would have had more time to prepare a response. Damage limitation of some kind. As it was, the first time McCabe would have seen the interview was more than 48 hours later, alongside the entire nation.”

Ms McAlister, who is interviewed as part of Channel 4’s new documentary making up some of its alternative Coronation content, said she was not passing judgement but had difficulty understanding why he did not stay to watch the interview.

She mused that it must have a very important matter such as an audience with the Queen.

Ms McAlister continued: “It must have been really important to walk away from watching a member of the Royal Family be questioned by Emily Maitlis, the foremost interrogator in the country at that point, about allegations of sexual impropriety and his relationship with a paedophile.”

Epstein was arrested for charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking in 2019 but he died in prison in what was deemed a suicide.

Prior to this, he was released from prison after serving an 18-month sentence for soliciting sex from an underage girl in Florida after which Andrew went to visit him.

In 2010, the pair were famously pictured walking around New York’s Central Park together, something Andrew described in the interview as the “wrong decision”.

However, he told Ms Maitlis that he did not regret his friendship with Epstein, in fact, he said there were some “seriously beneficial outcomes”. He also did not apologise to Epstein’s victims.

The Duke of York has always vehemently denied the allegations made against him.

The first part of Problem Prince airs on Channel 4 on May 1 at 9pm.

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