When the former Prince Andrew invited Emily Maitlis to interview him at Buckingham Palace for the BBC’s Newsnight programme in 2019, it was one of the most ill-fated decisions in recent royal history.
And now the producer who secured the interview, Sam McAlister, has said Andrew’s elder daughter, Princess Beatrice, should share the blame for that foolish decision.
Speaking for the first time since King Charles’s brother was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, Ms McAlister describes Beatrice, 37, as the ‘rainmaker’ – a term usually used for someone who pulls off major financial deals.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in his interview for the BBC’s Newsnight programme in 2019 – one of the most ill-fated decisions in recent royal history
Princess Beatrice, was ‘profoundly important in the conversation’ of getting her father to agree to an interview, says Sam McAlister
‘In my view, when Princess Beatrice came along unexpectedly to the face-to-face negotiation, which happened just three days before this interview physically happened, I called her the “rainmaker”,’ says the producer, who was played by Billie Piper in Scoop, the Netflix drama about Newsnight’s coup.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail’s Palace Confidential YouTube channel, Ms McAlister explains: ‘The reason is because she was protecting her father’s interests. She was super-polite, super-nice, super-friendly. But in that room with the people that were there, she was the one that had his interest purely at heart.
‘And it was clear that if we did not answer her questions well, that this interview was never going to happen. That is why I believe she was profoundly important in the conversation.’
She also believes Bea’s imminent wedding to property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was a big influence on Andrew agreeing to the interview.
She added: ‘The human reason was he was about to turn 60. His daughter was about to get married and he wanted, as a father, to walk her down the aisle and return to the life that he had had before these onerous allegations and friendships hung over him like a dark cloud. So his motivation is to, I suppose, clear his name.’
The Epstein Files have subsequently proved that the King’s brother lied repeatedly to Ms Maitlis in the interview.
Stone me! Keef, 82, to be a great-granddad
Saint Laurent’s loafer will set you back £880 – or High Street favourite Shuh offers a strikingly similar version for £55
Sir Mick Jagger’s rivalry with Rolling Stones bandmate and song-writing partner Keith Richards has generally been friendly over the years, except for when the guitarist claimed in his memoir that the singer had a ‘tiny todger’.
Now Richards, 82, is sizing up to him in another department. Keef’s eldest grandchild is pregnant – 12 years after Jagger, 82, became a great-granddad.
Ella Richards, 29, is expecting her first child with her boyfriend, Sascha von Bismarck, 31.
The Burberry model – who shared a naked image online of her baby bump, right – is the daughter of Keith’s son Marlon Richards and former model and stylist Lucie de la Falaise.
Sascha is the younger brother of Kate Moss’s ex, photographer Count Nikolai von Bismarck.
Looking back on the life of his friend Kenneth Williams on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Gyles Brandreth reveals he severed links with the Carry On star weeks before his death.
Gyles, 77, explains. ‘We used to have dinner parties, and one week we had the principal of my wife’s old college, St Anne’s, Oxford. Kenneth drank too much and by the end of the evening I heard him using the C-word to her face repeatedly.
‘It was a nightmare.’
The couple declined to see him again. Gyles adds: ‘A few weeks later, we heard he’d died.’
Helena’s happiness for wedding belle Millie
Helena Morrissey, who took the City by storm when she became a chief executive at just 35, had to cope recently with the breakdown of her eldest child Flo’s marriage to fellow pop singer Benjamin Clementine.
But now Baroness Morrissey, 60, has happier news from another of her nine children – Millie, 26, has wed bookseller Harris Lechtzier at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London. ‘I still have a big spring in my step from Millie and Harris’s wedding,’ says Helena, pictured with the couple.
Denise van Outen is fed up with stars using online ‘filters’ to boost their looks. ‘I’ve seen celebrities in the flesh and thought, “Oh, that’s not how they look on Instagram”. I’d hate for people to meet me and say I don’t look how l do on social media,’ says the broadcaster, 51. ‘I’m really opposed to using filters. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to ask friends to take down pictures of me from social media because they’ve applied a filter and I look plastic.’
Indecorous court case for livid Lytle
Lulu Lytle’s interior design artistry led her to No 10 when Carrie Johnson, wife of Boris, asked her to bring fresh glory to the then prime minister’s flat, a feat she accomplished with golden wallpaper at £840 a roll.
But Lytle, 54, who has showrooms in London and New York, is steeling herself for the more austere surroundings of the High Court, I can disclose, alleging what in legal documents she calls ‘copyright infringement… carried out flagrantly’ and with ‘cynical disregard’.
She claims that a substantial part of her Scrolling Fern design was copied by Warner House – holder of a Royal Warrant issued by King Charles.
As restaurateur Jeremy King launches his revival of Simpson’s in the Strand this week, he has revealed how he once helped to expose a fraud ring at one of his former venues. ‘I caught somebody at The Ivy stealing a loaf,’ recalls Jeremy, 71. ‘He cried and said, “I’ve never stolen a thing in my life”. I insisted he went. The police came for this guy. He was the head of a credit-card fraud ring – he was using all our customer credit cards to defraud [them].’
