Why Did Prince Andrew the Duke of York Throw Himself Under the Bus?

NYTimes |  When members of the British royal family consent to warts-and-all television interviews about their troubled private lives, it generally has the effect of roiling the waters rather than calming them.

So when Prince Andrew set out to explain his friendship with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a BBC interview broadcast Saturday night, it backfired predictably. 

Viewers were left shaking their heads at the wisdom of consenting to a polite-but-relentless grilling by the journalist Emily Maitlis in the first place. Many said they found his statements alternately defensive, unpersuasive or just plain strange.

Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York, repeatedly denied accusations by Virginia Roberts Giuffre that he had sex with her when she was 17 years old and had been offered to him by Mr. Epstein. Under insistent questioning by Ms. Maitlis, the duke insisted he had “no recollection” of meeting Ms. Giuffre. 

 But he could not explain the photograph taken in a London house that appeared to show him with his arm around the girl’s bare waist, and with Mr. Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, smiling in the background.

He disputed her account of an alleged meeting between him and Ms. Giuffre in a club in London. She has claimed that he sweated profusely while they danced, but he told the BBC that he could not have sweated while dancing with her at the time because he had a medical condition, dating from his combat tour in the Falklands War, that did not allow him to perspire.