Fox News Flash top entertainment headlines 4/12
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Prince Andrew spent two days alone on a luxury California estate watching porn on cable TV.
The claim was made by former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown in a new bombshell book that’s coming out on April 26 titled "The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – The Truth and the Turmoil."
It explores the "scandals, love affairs, power plays and betrayals" that have rocked the British royal family over the last 20 years. It promises to feature new revelations based on Brown’s access to palace insiders.
The bestselling author previously wrote a biography on the Princess of Wales titled "The Diana Chronicles," which was published in 2007.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN ‘TOLD PEOPLE’ THAT PRINCE ANDREW WAS ‘A USEFUL IDIOT,’ BOOK CLAIMS
Britain's Prince Andrew can't seem to escape public scandal. (Steve Parsons/Pool Photo via AP)
In her new book, the 68-year-old alleged that the Duke of York "was always as oversexed as a boob-ogling adolescent."
"I am told that former US ambassador to the UK Walter Annenberg’s wife, Lee, was appalled when the Duke made a private visit in 1993 to Sunnylands, their magnificent Palm Springs estate in California, and holed up in his bedroom for two days, apparently watching porn on cable TV," she wrote, as quoted in an excerpt published by The Telegraph.
The alleged incident occurred following Andrew’s separation from Sarah Ferguson in 1992. Their divorce was finalized in 1996. Anneberg passed away in 2009 at age 91.
Andrew, widely reputed to be the favorite of Queen Elizabeth II’s three sons, was once a popular royal and acclaimed by the British press for his active service as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands War. He went on to earn the nickname "Randy Andy" for courting glamorous girlfriends.
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Prince Andrew on board HMS Invincible during the Falklands War, in which he served as a helicopter pilot. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
However, Andrew began losing his popularity and was dubbed "Air Miles Andy" due to accusations of a lavish playboy lifestyle that was funded by taxpayers.
Brown described how Jeffrey Epstein boasted to his pals about using the prince’s friendship.
"Privately, Epstein told people that Andrew was an idiot, but – to him – a useful one," Brown wrote. "A senior royal, even if tainted, is always a potent magnet abroad. Epstein confided to a friend that he used to fly the Duke of York to obscure foreign markets, where governments were obliged to receive him, and Epstein went along as HRH’s investment adviser. With Andrew as frontman, Epstein could negotiate deals with these (often) shady players."
According to Brown, it was Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of press baron Robert Maxwell, who introduced the pair. Brown claimed Maxwell "fell madly in love" with Epstein "but the affair was brief."
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Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in New York City, circa 2005. (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
"As a strong-willed, mature woman with a short pixie haircut, she was nothing like the pliable, pre-adolescent waifs Epstein liked to dominate," Brown wrote. "Their relationship quickly turned transactional: Epstein made the money, and Ghislaine made the introductions. Unable to hold his sexual attention, she found a way to keep him at her side by recruiting ‘nubiles’ (as she called them) to service his insatiable needs."
According to the excerpt, Epstein found ways to keep his new royal pal entertained.
"Epstein made Andrew feel he had joined the big time – the deals, the girls, the plane, the glittering New York world, where he wasn’t seen as a full-grown man still dependent on his mother’s Privy Purse strings or on the harsh pecking order of the Palace," Brown claimed. "The Duke was always as oversexed as a boob-ogling adolescent."
"The privacy of Epstein’s homes was a valuable prerequisite to a prince always trying to avoid Palace censure and the scorn of the press," she wrote. "On visits to New York, instead of staying as expected at the British consulate, Andrew stayed just five blocks away with Epstein so often, he was given his own grandly decorated guest suite. The sardonic Epstein christened it ‘the Britannica Suite.’"
Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, right, attend the Royal Ascot Ladies Day. (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images )
In the book, Brown explored the connections among the trio and how they used each other for personal gains.
"Prince Andrew was Ghislaine’s biggest social catch to present to Epstein," she wrote. "He was easy to entertain and satiate. Andrew, Epstein and Ghislaine became a peripatetic social trio – the Three Musketeers of Lust – showing up together at Ascot, joining a shoot at Sandringham, and stepping out at the Queen’s Dance of the Decades at Windsor Castle in June 2000. Andrew insists that Epstein was there only as Ghislaine’s plus-one – but three months after the Sandringham weekend, in March 2001, there they were again, partying together, this time in London."
"It is the events of that weekend that would seal the Duke of York’s destiny of descent and disappear him altogether into a lifelong pit of shame," the excerpt concluded.
A palace spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment concerning Brown’s book. However, a spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital that the palace doesn’t generally comment "on such books."
PRINCE ANDREW USES EX-WIFE SARAH FERGUSON’S INSTAGRAM TO WRITE A NOW-DELETED MESSAGE USING HRH TITLE
Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown previously wrote a biography on Princess Diana. (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
In February, Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre in her sex assault lawsuit against the British prince. The-38-year-old alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and forced to have sex with Andrew on three occasions. The now-62-year-old repeatedly denied the allegations. The American woman reached the settlement with Andrew after the judge rejected the prince’s bid to win early dismissal of the lawsuit earlier this year.
In a letter to the judge from Giuffre's attorney David Boies, a statement was included that said, in part: "Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks."
According to the statement, Andrew acknowledged that Epstein trafficked "countless young girls" over many years and said the prince "regrets his association with Epstein and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others." He also pledged to support the victims of sex trafficking as part of demonstrating his regret.
Giuffre asserted that she met Andrew while she traveled frequently with Epstein between 2000 and 2002 when her lawyers maintain she was "on call for Epstein for sexual purposes" and was "lent out to other powerful men," including Andrew.
VIRGINIA GIUFFRE VS. PRINCE ANDREW: BOTH SIDES AGREE TO DROP CASE AFTER $16M SETTLEMENT
Photo from 2001 that was included in court files shows Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre who says Jeffrey Epstein paid her to have sex with the prince. Andrew has denied the charges. In the background is Epstein's girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. (U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Her lawsuit said she suffered significant emotional and psychological distress and harm. She has alleged she had sex with Andrew three times: in London during a 2001 trip, at Epstein’s New York mansion when she was 17 and in the Virgin Islands when she was 18.
Andrew repeatedly denied Giuffre’s allegations and has said he can’t recall ever meeting her, although a photograph of Giuffre and Andrew together in a London townhouse, his arm around her bare midriff, was included in Giuffre’s lawsuit against him.
Inconsistencies in her statements over the years that would have been highlighted by Andrew’s attorneys at trial may have motivated her, in part, to settle, though she has explained them as innocent mistakes that occurred when recalling traumatic events years later.
Andrew spent years combating concerns about his links with Epstein, who took his life at age 66 in 2019 in a Manhattan federal lockup while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell, now 60, was convicted of related charges.
Virginia Giuffre holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein began abusing her sexually. (Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
A settlement of the Andrew lawsuit would follow deals reached by Giuffre years ago to resolve separate lawsuits against Maxwell and Epstein. It was recently revealed that Epstein settled for $500,000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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