Britain’s Prince Andrew sparks backlash after ‘disastrous’ TV interview

Britain’s Prince Andrew provoked a backlash Sunday following an extraordinary TV interview branded “disastrous” by public relations experts in which he denied having sex with an alleged victim of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  The royal was lambasted from all quarters for his lack of judgement and empathy with Epstein’s victims, while his eyebrow-raising defence that he was at a high street pizza chain, never sweated and only stayed at the disgraced financier’s home because he was “honourable” drew derision.  The unprecedented interview was the first time Queen Elizabeth II’s second son has answered questions from the media about Virginia Robert’s allegations.  Roberts, now Giuffre, claims she was forced to have sex with the prince on three occasions — in London in 2001 when she was 17, in New York and on Epstein’s private Caribbean island. Andrew has repeatedly denied the accusations.  The interview with the BBC was a PR gamble intended to draw a line under the saga. Instead, it generated uniformly negative newspaper coverage.  Image consultant Mark Borkowski said the exchanges were “like watching a man in quicksand” and that he had “never seen anything so disastrous”.