Transcription
Everything Andrew has said stretches credibility. And they know from the security information where he was that night. Now, I asked the police where he was, and he wouldn't tell me. And they said, "Oh, it's, it's, it's, um, no, we can't reveal it because it has security implications." No, it doesn't. It's 20 years ago. We know from the plane logs he's been to this island of his on many occasions. He'd received massages regularly at his, uh, his house. He is beyond the pale. There's no way back for him in the Royal Family. Andrew is, is, is, is horrible to his staff. He's not quite all there, is he? I mean, he has these teddy bears lined up in his room. I've forgotten how many it is, 64, I think it is. They all have to be lined up in exactly the right way, in the right place.
What Andrew has actually been doing on Epstein Island, or what we imagine he's been doing, what, what's actually going on? The Epstein client list has just been released. Is there anything particularly with regards to Prince Andrew? Is anything that we can glean from it? Andrew has been, uh, a frequent and, uh, personal, close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. And, uh, really, it makes his, uh, excuses, his explanation for what happened, increasingly threadbare. For example, he told a famous interview on BBC with Emily Maitlis that he'd gone to New York to break off his relationship with Jeffrey. Most people when they want to break a relationship, they, uh, stop talking to someone, yeah, or, or they send an email, or on the phone. They don't go to New York for 3 days and stay with the person they're allegedly breaking out with. So everything Andrew has said stretches credibility. And the fact that he's now being mentioned in these new court documents, um, just reinforces the fact that he is beyond the pale. There's no way back for him in the Royal Family.
Uh, Charles was very unwise, in my view, to allow him to parade with the Royal Family at Christmas, going to church, uh, which presumably Charles was going to ease him back in, because that's Charles's habit. Uh, we saw it, by the way, with Michael Fagan. We've seen it with, um, Camilla. When people are out of fashion, he lets some time pass, then gradually brings them back in. That's his habit. He was doing the same thing with Andrew. And, uh, clearly, that's not going to work. And Charles is actually, in my view, damaging and, and endangering the monarchy by continuing to associate with his brother, who really should be, um, persona non grata, should have his titles removed, uh, should be chucked out of his 31-bedroom house, uh, in Royal Lodge, and he should go off and do some charity work, which is, after all, what say, John Profumo did in the 1960s. And you go and rehabilitate yourself quietly behind the scenes, and maybe 10 years on, people will listen to you. Uh, he hasn't done that. Um, and for the Royal Family, this is more of the same, stuff being dredged up, which is unhelpful to them and not helpful to Charles, actually.
Well, you know, what's interesting with regards to what you're saying about Charles very slowly trying to get him back into the, the fold. When Charles, um, ascended to the throne, I gather that he was saying that he wanted a smaller Royal Family. So it should have been easier, actually, to just say, "Listen, Andrew, mate, you know, you're on the sidelines from now on." So it's sort of a contradiction, isn't it? Well, look, Charles alleged had it put up, had it put out that he wanted to have a slimmed-down monarchy. Um, his idea of a slimmed-down monarchy, it appears, is having fewer people on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, end of story. Uh, what he's not doing, and he needs to do if he wants to have a slimmed-down monarchy, is cut all these people off who are receiving public money by the back door, because they all get some funds from the Duchy of Lancaster, their tax-deductible expenses, although they have no connection with the Duchy of Lancaster. That's how the Queen dealt with it. No doubt Charles is doing the same thing. He needs to cut all these people out. Follow the more European monarchies who have got the head of state and partner next in line and their children, and that's it. And there's really no reason for a monarchy to have any more than that. He's not doing that, nor is he reforming the taxation arrangements which are so beneficial to the Royal Family. He's actually making no changes.
Meantime, he's continuing to fly in private jets and helicopters and all the other things he did before, even though he is supposed to be, I gather, he's no longer a working Royal. Like, what does that actually mean? And, and how are we still funding Andrew? Well, I mean, working Royals, a definition which they've given themselves for working Royals are those who attend fetes or other events and cut ribbons and turn up at events and say hello to people. That's what you mean by working. If you look at those so-called working Royals, very few that actually do very much work in commerce at all. I mean, most of them attend events on less than half the days of the year. So I'm sure many of us who are in work would like to have a working arrangement which was so lackadaisical as that. Um, however, that's what most of them do. So Andrew is no longer cutting ribbons and visiting places, so therefore he's no longer deemed to be a working Royal. But the fact of the matter is that they are, as I mentioned, funded indirectly from the Duchy of Lancaster. Uh, they get the money from, from that source. Uh, and therefore, that's a public expense indirectly, because Charles claims these expenses against tax.
Now, that was changed in 2011 when the Sovereign Grant came in, because before that, we had a Civil List, and we used to see each year, very transparently, how much has been given to each member of the Royal Family. Uh, and the only reason it was changed to this new arrangement is in order to hide from the public at large how much these people are getting. Wow, that is mad. I'm going to ask you more about the intricacies of, of the finances and how and how we're paying for a lot of the Royals' duties. With Andrew, just to stay on the Epstein list for a little bit, I mean, he seems to be, am I right in saying, mentioned significantly more than even, I mean, people talk about Clinton, some people mention Trump, and a few other names. It feels like Andrew's come up a lot more than anyone else. Was he just like the best buddy of Epstein? He was certainly one of the best buddies of Epstein. And if you look at the, uh, address book that Epstein had, I mean, my word, it's just a, it's the, it's the directory of the, of the rich and famous across the world. I mean, you have to take your hat off, in one sense, to Epstein, because he managed to accumulate all these people as contacts. Uh, and indeed, the, the address book he had included other people from this country, leading politicians from this country. So, I mean, he's managed to accumulate all these people. Now, Andrew appears, uh, a number of times. The, the phone book that Epstein had had a different number for, uh, for Andrew, a number of different numbers, including private numbers at Buckingham Palace and private numbers at, um, Sandringham. So he was extremely close to, to Epstein. And of course, he was very close to Ghislaine Maxwell, who, as we know, was convicted of acting effectively as a sort of person who secured and procured underage girls for Epstein.
This seems like a running pattern. I'm thinking of Savile as well, in terms of using the Royals to gain status while hiding heinous crimes with underage people. Yes, I think that's right. And it's not unusual to try to attach yourself to a very famous person because it gives you some protection from interference from the police or anyone else, not legally, of course, but in terms of people not wanting to take a risk by pursuing matters. Savile, of course, uh, was known to be, um, engaging in grotesque behavior, uh, back in the 1980s. I, I spoke to the, um, leading lawyer for British Rail, because Savile used to be, uh, used by British Rail for their adverts, and British Rail dropped him in the 1980s because they had had allegations put to them that Savile had been having relations with their dead bodies in the morgue. Um, and at that point, they dropped him. Now, that was in 1980-something, and yet it took till after his death before this came out. But the BBC, for example, knew about Savile because he was kept off Children in Need quite deliberately. Um, and of course, the BBC did nothing about it until ITV actually published or produced a program on Savile. Now, as you say, he used the Royal Family. He became very close to Charles. He actually advised, it's unbelievable, really. He advised Charles and Diana on their marriage. He advised Charles and Camilla on their relationship. God knows how he felt qualified to do that. He was given personal gifts by Charles. Charles visited him in his cottage. And when he died, Charles and Camilla were the mourners for Savile. And Charles was warned about Savile a number of times, and he thought this was jealousy, and there's nothing wrong with the man. But I mean, actually, Charles has shown some really bad judgment over the years, because Savile was not the only person of, uh, of importance, if you like, who wanted to attach himself to Charles. We saw it with Kenneth Lay, the Enron guy, who got some coverage out of Charles, and eventually, of course, the thing went, uh, belly up, put that way. Um, who's that? That was Enron's big company in America, and Kenneth Lay was the chief executive, and, uh, and the company was basically unsound. And, uh, Charles gave it some credibility by associating with, uh, Kenneth Lay, who invited him over to his place in America and everything else. So Charles has shown some bad judgment. He was also great friends with, uh, uh, the Bishop of Lewes, as, as was Peter Ball, who, um, was, um, who admitted, uh, abusing boys. He had got a caution from the police for that. Charles continued to associate with him after he'd received a caution, and when it was spooked to him, U, many years later, he said he didn't understand what a caution was. I found it very little to believe he didn't understand what a caution was.
So that's that leads to my next question then. With Andrew and Charles, is this a case sometimes of stupidity and ignorance, or not caring about the misdeeds of, say, Jeffrey Epstein? I think it's willing to see the, I think it's willing to see people through the prism that you want to see them through, as opposed to the prism that actually exists. And, and not being prepared to listen to other people who have your best intentions at heart and prepared to tell you the truth, to ignore that because it doesn't suit the image you've created in your own mind. But I mean, the, the reluctance of, uh, kings, if you like, or of dictators around the world to listen to advice, is is legendary. And quite often, of course, in medieval times and onwards, and including with dictators now in different parts of the world, if they are told what they don't want to hear, then the person who tells them is, uh, quietly disposed of. With Andrew, though, I suppose he can't really plead that kind of ignorance or wishful thinking, because he was allegedly engaging in the very activities that we know Epstein was doing. Yes, well, I mean, as I understand it, um, uh, William, Prince William, was pretty anti, uh, his uncle and wanted him kept out of the loop. Uh, and I think, I think Harry was also of the same mind. And it was Charles who was more willing to tolerate his brother. Wow, that's interesting. So they, and why might that be? 'Cause I've, I have heard that, you know, Andrew, aside from the Epstein allegations, is also a pretty horrible character. Just, that's, that's the opinion of. Well, Andrew is, is, is, is horrible to his staff. I mean, legendary. Uh, the, the abuse he shouts at his staff, shouts at police officers, when he arrives at Buckingham Palace, when arrived at Buckingham Palace and the gates weren't open immediately, he would then abuse the police down, down the phone. Uh, the famous episode in Windsor Great Park when the gates didn't open, which, um, has been humorously called Gate Gate, when he, um, rather than just taking a short detour to his house, rammed these gates until they opened with his Range Rover, caused, I think it was £80,000 of damage, which the taxpayer picked up, because it was money paid by the Crown Estate, and the Crown Estate is, that's off the Crown Estate's profits which go to the Treasury.
I suppose we should get into what Andrew has actually been doing on Epstein Island, or what we imagine he's been doing. What, what's actually going on? Well, it's not entirely clear what's been going on. We have, uh, various accounts which are contradictory. His own account, of course, is, uh, kind of, "Well, excuse me, I know nothing," um, which, which bears little scrutiny, to be honest with you, because he's been photographed with Epstein in New York and Central Park, apart from anything else. We know from the plane logs he's been to this island of his, this disreputable island, on many occasions. The latest information that came out suggested he'd received massages regularly at his, uh, his house. So all those have been, um, put in the public domain. Uh, uh, Virginia Giuffre, of course, has, um, made many allegations. Andrew denied them vehemently. He then paid her off, I think it was £12 million, something. I have to say, it's quite historic to give £12 million to a woman you never met, which is allegedly what he's doing. I've never met Prince Andrew, who actually give me £12 million as well. Um, so, I mean, the whole thing is just sticks to high heaven, to be perfectly frank with you.
How much is £12 million for a man like Andrew? Well, it's difficult to know, because of course, the Royal Family keeps its money details very secret indeed. And when parliamentarians have tried to find out how much the Royal Family has, they're not told, because the Royal Family always pleads, "We're running out of money, we have to sell a castle or something." And then, um, Parliament says, "Well, how much have you got?" We don't say. So they never reveal this, and they've exempted themselves largely from the Freedom of Information Act, so we can't really find out. It's quite extraordinary and, uh, and unbelievable, really, when you compare our monarchy with other monarchies in terms of how secret they are and how rich they are. But Andrew was making, um, a comfortable living, I think, from, uh, his, uh, activities with dubious dictators around the world. I've set them all out in my book, uh, in the chapter "The Grand Old Duke of York," with various countries. The more unpleasant the dictator, the happier he's to be associating with them and spending time with them. With no particular instances when he was offered large-scale commissions, up to £3 million in one case, just for making a couple of phone calls or sending a couple of emails. So, doesn't it vary? Many of those from to bring the money in. The reason we don't know definitively is because of course, uh, Fergie, his other half, in, who's never quite married, to never quite divorced either, um, she's like a candelabra. You pour money in at one end and it goes out the other end. So she's legendary for spending money. So quite how much money he's got, we don't know. They did manage to buy this ski chalet in Switzerland, I think it was £17 million, thereabouts. One wonders how they managed to afford that, because officially Andrew's income was, I think, from the Queen, £150,000 a year, and £20,000 for his naval, uh, pension. That doesn't add up to a ski chalet in Switzerland. Um, so you have to wonder where the money came from. It has never been properly explained. He did, of course, manage to secure a loan or a grant of money, a donation from Epstein, to help pay off Fergie's debts, in about 2009-2010, when this was put to, um, Sarah Ferguson, she said, "Oh, oh yes, well, that, that was a mistake, a gratuitous mistake, and I'll, I'll, I'll pay it back." Well, in 2015, she was, after she paid it back, and she said, "No comment." Someone has to assume she hasn't paid it back. So what was that? Was that a loan, did you say? Epstein? That was to help pay off her debts. Sarah Ferguson wasn't always in debt. She always spent money like water, and she got, they got a loan from Epstein. She got either a loan or a grant of money from Epstein, and I don't think it's ever been paid back. Oh, but once that starts happening, once you're in the pocket of, I mean, that's sort of implicates her in the whole. Well, it does. And, and, but we know as well that, um, there's been episodes where she has sat down with, with, um, with, uh, journalists, effectively, uh, closet journalists who are running a scam, and, um, asking for half a million pound for access to Andrew. That's been filmed. Um, so she's not averse to selling the Royal Family for money, as indeed Andrew isn't. And Prince Harry, but we can get into that in a bit, with regards to selling information to his family, by writing his book, I think. But, uh, that's interesting. Do I mean, are the, the kids then victims? He's got, what is it? Two kids? Is it? Well, I mean, the kids aren't responsible for their parents. That's, that's the case with, with, um, those two daughters, and it's the case with, uh, any children. You can't, uh, label the sins of the parents and put them on the children. So, I mean, as far as I can tell, they're, they're not guilty of the sort of things that their mother and father have been doing. Must be a very difficult time for them. Well, I'm not sure it's terribly difficult. They are, and their Royal Family, they got plenty of money, they got plenty of connections. I mean, I'm not really crying my heart out for them. They're still royals, though. You know, and that's what you're used to. You're born into that, you're sort of used to that status. And all of a sudden, in the papers, everywhere, your, your father's linked to the, the worst possible thing in the world. Yes, it's not, it's not great having your dad linked to something like that, that's certainly true. Yeah, I feel a bit sorry for that. I don't, I don't know too much about them. Is it Eugenie and Beatrice? Yeah, I don't know. I feel a bit, well, I don't know enough about them. Um, I think if a door's opened for them as a consequence of their royal connection, so it works both ways. It does, it does. Yeah. But even to think back on that, you'd be aghast thinking, oh, a lot of the stuff that's happened in my life has been, is owed to Epstein. Well, I, I push it a bit far. I mean, they would have got all doors open to them whether or not their dad was associated with Epstein or not. I mean, that, that would happen automatically to members of the Royal Family.
What are the ramifications for Andrew? Because you mentioned, firstly, okay, now this has been brought up again, and Charles can't quite bring him back into the fold. But can royals be investigated the same way the rest of us can? In theory, apart from the King, can't be. Uh, because in, because in theory, every action taken by the police or by the courts is done in the name of the King. Hence, um, you know, when it was the Queen, it was Regina versus so-and-so. Um, you can't prosecute herself. When the Queen was stopped for not wearing a seatbelt in her car, as when she was driving, she couldn't be prosecuted for it. In theory, she could have murdered someone and not be prosecuted for it. Any member of the Royal Family who is not the Monarch is a normal citizen and can be prosecuted for anything which they have done. It's up to the police to investigate it. Of course, the police have been extremely reluctant to investigate anything to do with Andrew. They've been asked a number of times by me and by, uh, Graham Smith at the Republic group and by others, uh, and they've not chosen to do so. As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed. It's embarrassing for them to to look into this. Uh, I, uh, pleased to look into an incident where we had written evidence that Michael Fagan, acting on behalf of Charles, his extremely close friend and associate, Michael Fagan, the man that Charles cannot do without, the letter from Michael Fagan to a, a Middle Eastern gentleman, basically offering help with nationality and help with honors, in return for a donation to the Prince's charity. That is a contradiction, in my view, an offense under the 1925 Honors Act to sell honors. I reported out to the police. You couldn't get a more black and white case. I had to keep pushing them. I don't know if you know the phrase in railway terms, "dead man's handle." The dead man's handle on the train, that's where the train driver has to keep his hand on the handle, and if he has a heart attack, he falls back, or the train stops because a handle comes back. Okay. And dead man's handle, it was like that with the police. You'd keep pushing this handle to do anything, and eventually the turn said they weren't going to do anything with it. So, you know, you can't get a more open and shut case in my view than that. So they don't want to investigate people like the Royals because they are famous, and it's embarrassing for the police. They don't want bad headlines. So much easier to pick on someone and peck them, isn't it, than pick on someone in the Royal Family. We do have a two-tier system in that, in that sense. But yes, they are legally, uh, uh, subjects to the law, same as everybody else, and the police ought to be that in mind.
Have you had anything further than pushback over the years by talking about the Royals, by talking about their crimes and things like that? Well, I mean, obviously, I'm not flavor of the month with, with Buckingham Palace. On the occasion when I've met a member of the Royal Family, um, they've generally been quite keen to ignore me and pretend I'm not there, which I find quite amusing. When I was, when I was made a member of the Privy Council, which required me to, um, uh, kiss hands with the Queen, which I thought was quite funny. Um, I'm sure I was, I was wondering why I was there, and she would wonder why I was there. But, yeah, um, other than that, a member of the Royal Family who was quite pleasant to me was Charles. When I met him, he was quite engaging. Did you, did you kiss her hand? The Queen? Yes. Did she kiss yours? No. So it doesn't work that way. Oh, you know, it should do. It should do. Well, bloody hell. So, okay.
Still just on Andrew for a moment. I'm trying to work out, is he a complete idiot? Is the guy just a complete idiot? He's not very bright. I mean, look, he's not very bright. He's very rude to his staff. We talked about that earlier on. Yeah. He's very unpleasant to people. Teddy bears? Yes. I mean, he's, he's not, he's not quite all there, is he? I mean, he has these teddy bears lined up in his room. I've forgotten how many it is, 64, I think it is. They all have to be lined up in exactly the right way, in the right place. Um, when a new member of staff comes, and they're given a day's training on where the teddy bears go. Shut up. It's true. No, they are. Um, he had, you know, he had it at his house, um, with you, show with Fergie, he had a toilet roll holder that played "God Save the Queen" when you pulled the paper out. I mean, he's not really all there, is he? Doesn't seem like it. And then, like some of the lies he came up with to cover himself. Um, I don't sweat what is he talking about? Well, of course, and Pizza Express. You know, he's not terribly bright, and, and it shows, I'm afraid. If you're going to, if you're going to be a liar, you're going to have to be a good liar, and, and that's, I'm afraid, he isn't. On the Pizza Express, is another example where the police are being deliberately unhelpful, because they know where he was that night, because they have a security detail. The time he was given security, I don't know if he still thinks he is. He was given security, security cover at that point, as he was a working Royal. And these records in the police are not thrown away, they're kept for decades. So they know from security information where he was that night. Now, I asked the police where he was, and they wouldn't tell me. And they said, "Oh, it's, it's, it's, um, no, we can't reveal it because it has security implications." No, it doesn't. It's 20 years ago, and it's a member of the Royal Family, is no longer a working Royal. Why is that security implications? It doesn't just embarrassing. But they can, they can sort that out now if they want to. The police. But so could Andrew, if Andrew was genuinely, uh, keen to show that he was at Pizza Express. Unlikely that it may be rather than as nightclub. Why doesn't he just say to the police, "I give you authority to release that information, and you can prove where I was"? But he doesn't do it, does he?
How optimistic or or pessimistic are you that Virginia Giuffre, his accuser, will ever see justice with regards to Andrew? Well, I mean, she's reached some sort of deal with him, which involves him, um, paying tribute to those who have been abused, which is kind of, kind of an odd arrangement. So I don't think that will necessarily go much further. But look, I mean, if it was just Britain, the thing would be smothered over. But you can't smother the American courts, because they are not going to, uh, worry whether there's a member of the Royal Family or not. The American courts are different. This is not unusual. If you go back to the day time of, uh, Edward and Mrs. Simpson, back in the 1930s, which was in those days a big scandal in this country, of course, him associating with the divorcee. The rest of the world knew about that. The British papers chose not to report it. It was reported for months and months in the American press. Wow. So if you want to buy a paper in New York and bring it back to London, you could show your friends about it. Um, this idea that you can keep things quiet in this country and, and, and, and somehow what happens to the rest of the world won't be communicated is just naive beyond belief. It's also the case, what happened with Spycatcher? You remember Spycatcher? That book, set, uh, written, uh, about the activities of MI5 in the 1960s, by an MI5 operative. And Mr. Smith went ballistic and made sure that Spycatcher wasn't available in this country. Well, of course, you couldn't stop it being published in America or Australia. And on day one, when that book came out, I got my friend in New York to send me a copy of it. So, you know, you know, we cannot shut down information which is available outside this country. And that's what the Royal Family still thinks it can do.
But will he see, maybe in America, in the inside of a prison cell? Well, I don't think he'll see that, because you have to be extradited for that. There's no way the British would extradite Prince Andrew, and probably the Americans wouldn't ask for it. The government wouldn't probably ask for that. But, um, you know, Andrew says he wants to cooperate with the American authorities. He said that all the way through. He says that and doesn't cooperate with them. Um, so if he wants to be, uh, keen to clear his name, if he's an innocent, he says he is, why doesn't he go and speak to the American authorities? Why doesn't he give evidence over there? Why doesn't he get the police to reveal details of where he was on that Pizza Express? The things he can do to prove his innocence, he chooses not to do so. You have to ask why.
One interesting fact here is that obviously this has been going on for a few years now with regards to Andrew, and yet we've mostly, many of us have been speaking about and reading about another Royal, Harry and Meghan, in particular. Why do you think that is? Because Meghan, for all her crimes, and I've been very outspoken about, you know, I say crimes, I mean her social etha crimes. I've been very outspoken about them. I think you have as well. But it's not quite the same level as what Andrew is being accused. It's not the same. And Andrew, as well as being involved, of course, in, in Jeffrey Epstein, which everybody's aware of, he's also been involved in behaving, uh, quite improperly, in using his position as a trade envoy for this country to enrich himself, to use that position for his own benefit, not for Britain's benefit. And that, to me, in many ways, is a worse crime than what he may have done with Jeffrey Epstein. And he's still not been brought to book for that. Um, there's a lot in my book about, uh, about his association with dodgy people and now he misused his position. I think that's going to come out, and there's going to be more attention paid to that. And I'm not going to let that go, because that's that's an abuse of his position which he, um, used, uh, allegedly working on behalf of the British government and the British people to enrich himself. So there's more from Andrew to come out, in my view. Certainly in the minds of the public. As far as Harry and Meghan are concerned, it's not the same thing, because that's almost a domestic dispute. I mean, the fact is that, as far as I can tell, Harry, obviously had a difficult upbringing with his mum dying in, in the way she did. It's not very easy being, um, a spare, as he calls himself in his book. As Andrew is, as Andrew is, and exactly the same, because that's a very fair comparison, because Andrew used to be second in line to the throne, and he's been going down the charts ever since, as, as new royals have been born, uh, to Charles and, and therefore, and then to William subsequently. So, and he's been slipping down the charts. Harry's been slipping down the charts. He was actually asked if he minded that, he said, "No, it's great." And he, he may have thought that, he may not have thought that, I don't know. But obviously, you know, in the old days, um, the second son in the Royal Family would be sent to run Australia or something else like that, or go, go and run India or whatever it happened to be. And of course, those options aren't over anymore. So what do they do? They have to be, they have to be produced, because you need to, you need an heir and a spare if you're a member of the Royal Family. You have to have somebody to take over if, if the heir disappears for some reason. So that's, that's, that's drummed into the Royal Family, this is how they have to procreate. Yeah. But what do you do with these people when they don't have a role now? You know, he's found Meghan, he's found love, as far as I can tell, uh, and he's very attached to her, and in a sort of John and Yoko way, it seems to me. Um, and, you know, good luck to him in some ways. But it's not the same as Harry, because what Harry has done is follow up with his family, and perhaps with Meghan's help, draw attention into the poor way in which the Royal Family behaves, particularly towards women, I think, and particularly towards people who aren't white. And I think Meghan, obviously, fits both categories. Um, so that's very different. That's a family dispute, in a way, very different to what, uh, Andrew had done, which is potentially illegal and certainly self-serving.
What I would say, though, is that Harry and Meghan, in my opinion anyway, they they haven't seemed to want to do the duties that are part of being in the Royals, and yet, and also wrote a book exposing a lot about them, but continue to use the name "the Sussexes." Yes, well, that's where I agree with you. Because I mean, I don't think anybody should be obliged to be a member of the Royal Family for life. I mean, why should you have a prison sentence before you, before you're born? And if he wants to opt out of the Royal Family, why shouldn't he? That's perfectly legitimate. If he wants to go live in California, why shouldn't he? And if he thinks he needs police protection in the UK, by the way, when there's so many gun crime issues in America, well, it's up to him if he wants to reach that conclusion. However, that's all up to him. But I agree with you that you can't have it both ways. You're either in the Royal Family, you're not. If you're in the Royal Family, um, then you have to behave as a member of the Royal Family is expected to do. If you're out of the Royal Family, you really can't call yourself HRH anymore, which he does. And you can't expect free travel back to the UK for Royal events. You can't expect to have a place at Frogmore Cottage to kind of pop into when you're in this country. You know, those things have to go. Yeah. And you still get, they've still got their website up, Harry and Meghan's Sussex's website. They've still got, she's using it for her coffee company that she's making. It's like the Sussex Coffee Company. Yes, you've got. Well, you shouldn't do that. You see, it's quite wrong to to use, um, something which is a public label for your own private benefit. It's one of the reasons why I've always criticized Charles, who's used a Duchy label to sell all sorts of bits and pieces, and that that Duchy mark is protected. It belongs to the state. He shouldn't be using that to to make profit for himself. So again, the Royal Family's got, um, form on this. Sarah Ferguson, of course, was busy, you know, helping Weight Watchers and, and, and selling, what was she selling? Soft drinks or something? House of Orange, giving a new meaning. Yeah, yeah. It's a difficult one that, 'cause, yeah, like, I suppose, like, what do they do with their lives? But I, I just think, yeah, you want to go into business and do separate things. All right, drop the title. Done. That's right. But they don't drop the title. They can't resist using it because it gives added value to what they're doing. MH. Peter Phillips was, was, um, I think, wasn't caught selling milk in China. Um, and he was using kind of, you know, "we drink this milk on the Royal Estate" type angle in his adverts, you know. So they all, they're all at it. They are, they are. It does my head in a bit. But, you know, if you got, you're a politician, you imagine the Prime Minister or Keir Starmer or someone saying, you know, going, setting up a company and saying, you know, "Parliament does this, and Parliament does that, and they buy my products." You know, they'd be out, they'd be run out of office, wouldn't they, right away? Yeah. Well, that's the problem with an unelected firm. You can't get rid of them. You can't sack them.
It does seem a bit mad. Um, who, who is, how, how does it work? And I, I suppose I could ask you to be fairly, um, general, you know, just, just because it'd be difficult to follow and it is so complicated. How does it work with, with us paying for the Royals? Okay, the first thing to say is that, um, the Royal Family in this country costs many, many times more than more families do in mainland Europe. In mainland Europe, they typically cost between about 5 million and 40 million a year. Ours costs monumentally more than that, in all sorts of ways. First of all, there's the Sovereign Grant, which is the main form of funding, and this is the one that they publicize as being how to get that money. The, the Civil List that replaced in 2011, they got 7.9 million from the Civil List. Um, last year, the Sovereign Grant was 86 million. So that's the increase has been, um, since 2011, more than 10, 11 times increase. Wow. Which no one else has had in this country. Just the Royal Family, one of the richest people in the country, one of the richest families in the country, has the biggest pay increase, paid for by the public purse, at a time when people are struggling, the cost of living crisis, when they can't afford energy bills and everything else. They're coining it. So that's the main form of income. But there are all the other hidden forms of income. There's the Duchy of Cornwall and Duchy of Lancaster. The Duchy of Cornwall, which is, you know, kind of a slush fund for the Prince of Wales, produces a profit over 20 million pound a year for William, for doing nothing. Nice fruit machine, just pull the handle, 20 million pound. Where do that come from? What does that mean? It comes from, it comes from the land holdings of the Duchy of Cornwall, which, you know, include things like, um, the Oval Cricket Ground is part of the Duchy of Cornwall. Oh, so because they own land, anyone who wants to use that land, they just rent it out, or, or they get money from, from rental income and so on. Okay. Or people, you know, want to use the riverbeds which they control, and they get money for the riverbed being used. I just say they own, uh, cricket ground, the Duchy of Cornwall, which is a great way for extra cover for the Prince to hit the taxpayer for six, down there. So that gives 20 million pound a year for the Prince of Wales. The King gets 20 odd million pound extra for the Duchy of Lancaster. Both of these Duchies, in my view, should belong to the state, and they should have been transferred to the state when the rest of the Crown Estate land was transferred in 1760. Uh, they weren't transferred because they were worthless at the time. They weren't transferred because they were worth nothing. And they've now become massive property holdings. So there's those. Some have been combined. Add the 86 million, add 40 odd million from those two. Then you add all the tax exemptions, which are unique to the Royal Family. They don't pay inheritance tax. No tax paid when the Queen died. I'm not talking about the state assets like Buckingham Palace. I'm talking about her private stamp collection, her private jewels, and her private racehorses. No tax was paid on that by Charles when he inherited those from the Queen. Why is that? Why have we just thrown away 20, 30, 40 million pounds of inheritance tax, which everybody else would pay in the country? Why is it that the Duchy of Cornwall, Charles and sister, was a private estate? I don't think it is. He's a private estate, but it's the only private estate in the country that pays no corporation tax, no capital gains tax. So exemption after exemption, tax break after tax break. You add this up, add on security, which the Royal Family costs, you're probably reaching somewhere like 500 million a year for the Royal Family. Wow. Compared to 5 to 40 for Holland, for Belgium, for Sweden, for Norway, for Denmark. That's bonkers. That's bonkers. It's not bonkers, it's an abuse. It's a total abuse. It's an arrogant abuse of an imperial Royal Family, which is the last imperial Royal Family in in Europe. All the others have become ingrained in the state, ingrained in democracy. We haven't. We still have a national anthem centered around one person. No other country is that. No other monarchy has that. The national anthem should be there to unite the people in every country. It is, but in this, you know, things like Canada. Oh, Canada. Every, everyone in Canada can sing that, um, and without any worry what it, what it means, whatever their views are. In this country, you have to first of all believe in God, and secondly, believe in monarchy, in order to want to sing the Royal, the national anthem. And hate the Scots, if you, if you sing all the C, all the. Well, indeed, indeed. So, yeah. And indeed, if you went to, I was at the, uh, uh, when Charles was, was, um, forgotten the word, inaugurated, as King, um, and he reads out this, this guff about taking actions against Catholics. It's also still there from, from 178, 1688. It's all still there. Absolute madness. And of course, no Catholic can ever, ever take the throne of Britain.
The weird thing though, is, I I feel like even, I mean, I don't mind people being, a lot of people are monarchists, royalists, they are in favor of, of the Royal Family. And I've heard some good arguments, like Stephen Fry did a good video about, countries that are the happiest in the world, all seem to have monarchies, some of the Scandinavian ones and the Dutch, and those kinds of things. And it symbolically takes some power away from a president, for example, you'd have a Prime Minister instead. So there are some good arguments for it. But I also just think, okay, but even a monarchist or royalist could then say, well, yes, but also, why aren't they paying inheritance tax when the rest of us are? Well, look, I mean, there's two things. First of all, you don't, I'm not in favor of a system where the president is also the Prime Minister. I mean, the American system, for example, or the French system, I don't think work. Uh, you can have a separation of power between Prime Minister and President. The President can cut the ribbons, you know, that's what happens in places like Ireland or Germany. There's not, not an issue about that. The, the, the figurehead for the country is totally different from the political leader. So that, that's actually more normal that to occur. But secondly, even if you're a royalist, and, yeah, I can understand people want to have a Royal Family, that's fine. But why don't we have a Royal Family like Denmark or Sweden or Norway or Belgium, where they're ingrained in the Constitution, where the King of Norway had to take an oath to democracy before he can take his throne? That's what happens in Norway. Over here, we have to take an oath to the King. Other way around. Yeah, that is mad. That is, um.
Tell me, what was I going to say? Okay, we got one more question for you. But first, I'm going to ask where you want to send people to find your work. Well, I've issued three books, or published, had three books published. The relevant one for this particular interview is "And What Do You Do? What the Royal Family Don't Want You to Know," yes, which is full of facts and figures. And I know many people who are in favor of the Royal Family who've changed their view as a consequence of reading my book, because you can be in favor of something superficially, when you find out the facts, then you don't become in favor of it. So that's been published by Biteback. It's available in all good bookshops, and some pretty rubbishy bookshops as well, as well as through Amazon and everything else. And my other two books, just for the record, are "Against the Grain," which is my political memoir, also Biteback, and "The Strange Death of David Kelly," which was published by Methuen in 2007. And, uh, cable, I'm happy to say. Okay. People go and get those books and support my wonderful guest. I want to ask you, who is a heretic that you admire? Yes. So you, you give me warning this question, Andrew. So I had to think about it. And I'm going to choose someone who, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have used the word heretic, but I'd used the word, um, a courageous, inspiring individual who went against the grain. Use that phrase I used a moment ago. And I'm thinking of Helen Suzman, who was a South African politician. Now, very few people have heard of Helen Suzman, but what she was, was, um, in the dark days of apartheid in South Africa, when the whole of the parliament was, was basically white and male, and Africans and horrible and racist to a man, and it was to a man. She was elected, uh, as a liberal in Cape Town, and she was, for a while, she was the only non-National Party MP in the parliament. So, and being a woman as well, and being liberal, and being, uh, of a view that they were all wrong, and apartheid was wrong, you can imagine that was a hugely difficult and challenging position for her to be in. She also took upon herself, not just to represent Cape Town, but to represent all the people she thought should be represented in a democracy, which is all the black people and all the colored people, the Indians, and so on, who were excluded from the system by the African majority. And she fought hard to look after them and to argue for change, and against the most appalling headwinds which she faced. And she never buckled. She never buckled. And I just think that woman was, you know, in that situation, once elected, you either cave in and keep quiet, or you stand up and be counted. And she stood up and be counted. And I think she did a fantastic job. So Nelson Mandela was in prison, he couldn't do much. She was inside the system, but my God, she used it as best she could. I think that's a beautiful answer. Um, I feel like your emotion just talking about her. Yeah, I admire a great deal. That's wonderful. And she sounds like I need to read up on her. You guys should all read up on her as well. Uh, I'll put a link down below as well as to Norman's work. As well as please do go support my wonderful guest. I'm just going to ask him a couple of questions from locals members. Do go check that out, Andrewgold.locals.com, to see that extra bonus bit. Hit the like and keep watching this channel.