2 weeks Ago
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a fortune is usually dead keen to throw it at Prince Andrew. Because they keep on doing it, don't they? They just can't help themselves, from the oligarch son-in-law of Kazakhstan's then president, who so obligingly paid £3m over the asking price for the Duke of York's former marital home at Sunninghill Park, to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who so famously lent the duke's ex-wife Sarah Ferguson £15,000 to help clear her debts. Even after King Charles stopped paying his security bills, Andrew is believed to have found what the royal journalist Robert Hardman's biography of the king delicately calls "other sources of income" related to his contacts in international trade – a phrase that makes you long for the good old days of Fergie gamely doing WeightWatchers ads to pay off her overdraft or Princess Anne's son-in-law going on I'm A Celebrity to discuss her reaction to his novelty boxer shorts.
And now – what are the odds? – the duke has struck lucky just when he needed it most. A mystery benefactor will foot the bill for him to stay on at Royal Lodge, the 30-bedroom pile in Windsor Great Park from which his older brother had been none too subtly trying to winkle him out, and which was the last remaining perk of what is no longer the forcibly retired Andrew's job. And no, don't be so impertinent: of course the duke will not be naming this public-spirited individual who has spared him the indignity of having to move into Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's old gaff Frogmore Cottage (a measly five bedrooms plus yoga studio).
Instead Michael Stevens, the keeper of the privy purse, has reportedly reviewed the arrangement and deemed it to be acceptable, which is the kind of total opacity around...
Gaby Hinsliff.
