Another royal source was quoted by the paper as saying, ‘This interview was completely unprecedented in offering a royal up for one hour on one subject without any questions being off limits.
‘Ordinarily you would say to the BBC, “He'll talk about X for 10 minutes but he won't talk about Y or Z”.
‘Why didn't they insist on the Duke being filmed carrying out royal duties and make the Epstein allegations a smaller part of a wider documentary?’
The interview has largely been slated as an unprecedented disaster for the Prince – and by extension, the monarchy.
With the royal house recently rocked by a series of scandals, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to not attend the royal Christmas celebrations, the Queen is said to be outraged by her son’s latest misstep.
Jason Stein, Andrew’s press secretary, quit his job last month, after reportedly telling the royal that doing such an interview was ‘not a good idea’.
Prince Andrew's Newsnight interview featured a number of strange admissions, including his excuse to his whereabouts on the day that Virginia Roberts claimed that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her for sex with him in London.
The Duke of York claimed on he could not have had sex with a teenage girl in the London home of his ‘good friend’ British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell because he was at home after attending a children’s party at Pizza Express in Woking, England.
He was asked why he could remember going for something so mundane as a pizza 18 years on, and he added: ‘Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is a very unusual thing for me to do. I’ve never been . . . I’ve only been to Woking a couple of times and I remember it weirdly distinctly.
'As soon as somebody reminded me of it, I went, “Oh yes I remember that”.'