The Duke of York has vigorously denied claims he slept with a teeanger, saying he had been at a Pizza Express in Woking with his daughter Princess Beatrice at the time.
Prince Andrew further reignited the controversy over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when he declared he had no regrets over their friendship.
Speaking during an unprecedented 60 minute interview with BBC Newsnight’s presenter Emily Maitliss the Duke of York vigorously denied Virginia Roberts’s claims she had been forced to sleep with him when she was just 17.
During the interview he gave a string of reasons as to why her accusations were false, including the fact that her account of him sweating while dancing at Tramps nightclub could not be true because he suffers from a medical condition which stops him perspiring.
He also said that on the night in question he was at home with his family after visiting Woking’s Pizza Express with Princess Beatrice.
The Prince says he only visited Epstein’s New York home in 2010 following his release from prison after serving time for child sex abuse offences, in order to break off the friendship. But he tells Ms Maitliss he had no regrets about their relationship.
Responding to her question he says: “Now, still not and the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful.”
He also admitted that he had attended a dinner party held by Epstein to celebrate his release from the Florida jail where he served 13 months for procuring an underage girl for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.
Royal insiders have revealed that the Duke of York insisted he was “not doing Newsnight”‘ weeks before agreeing to his top aide’s suggestion of the broadcast interview that was yesterday branded a PR “disaster”.
Prince Andrew is said to have initially refused to take part in the interview, broadcast last night, before being persuaded by Amanda Thirsk, his private secretary.
During the Newsnight interview the Prince admitted the controversy over his friendship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a constant sore for the Royal family.
But he was insistent in his denial that he had ever slept with either Ms Roberts or any other under-age women, saying “It didn’t happen.”
In a US court deposition Ms Roberts claimed she met the Prince 2001, went dancing with him at Tramp Nightclub in London and went on to have sex with him in a house in Belgravia belonging to Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell.
But the Prince says he was at home with his children after taking Beatrice to Pizza Express on the night Roberts claimed this happened.
In response to her claim that he was sweating profusely that night, he says that would have been impossible.
He said: “I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was…was it…yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falkland’s War when I was shot at and I simply…it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
The Prince also denies having bought her a drink at Tramps nightclub, because he does not drink himself.
“I’m convinced that I was never in Tramps with her. There are a number of things that are wrong with that story, one of which is that I don’t know where the bar is in Tramps. I don’t drink, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a drink in Tramps whenever I was there,” he said.
Ms Giuffre’s allegations were struck from US civil court records in 2015 after a judge said they were “immaterial”.