It's not the first time this week that Prince Andrew is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Following a disastrous interview on BBC's Newsnight about his long term friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, new allegations emerged on Monday that Prince Andrew used the n-word during a 2012 meeting with political aide Rohan Silva.
During the Buckingham Palace meeting, Silva alleges the Queen’s son made the racist comment in a conversation regarding trade department improvements. When asked how the department could do a better job, Prince Andrew allegedly replied, “well, if you pardon the expression, that really is [n-word] in the woodpile.”
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According to a report by The Evening Standard, the former tech adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron (who is of Sri Lankan descent) said the prince’s comments left him appalled. “I remember distinctly how I walked blinking into the sunshine outside Buckingham Palace, reeling at the prince’s use of language,” Silva wrote in a column. “He clearly wasn’t taken to task very often by the people around him, which meant offensive language could go unchallenged.”
This isn't the first time Prince Andrew was accused of making racially insensitive comments. Former UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has also accused Andrew of making “unbelievable” racist comments about Arabs. On a podcast released last Saturday, Smith said she previously spoke with the prince during a state dinner at Buckingham Palace for the Saudi royal family. “The conversation left us slack jawed with the things he felt it was appropriate to say,” said Smith. While Smith didn’t specify the comments made, she said “it involved a comment about camels..."
On Saturday night, Prince Andrew gave a rare but widely disseminated BBC interview where he said he doesn’t regret his long-time friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and showed no remorse or empathy for victims of sexual abuse. “Do I regret the fact that he [Epstein] has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes,” he said. When BBC journalist Emily Maitlis quickly rebutted his reference to Epstein’s “unbecoming” character to clarify that he is a sex offender, the Duke of York apologised and said he was just being “polite.” Later Prince Andrew stated that his 4-day stay in Epstein's New York mansion after Epstein served time for being a sex offender was to end the friendship, despite the fact that he attended a dinner held in his honour during the trip.
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The Duke of York, is in now in more hot water following the Epstein interview — his most recent comment using the n-word is just adding to a list of infractions that also include allegations of his own sexual misconduct.
Virginia Giuffre, who has accused Epstein of sexually abusing her while she was underage, said in court documents that Epstein made her have sex with Andrew multiple times. Although the prince claimed in the BBC interview that he never met Giuffre, a photo of them together has circulated online.
Now, growing backlash against Prince Andrew has prompted students at the University of Huddersfield to launch a campaign to remove him as the school’s chancellor. And as a result of the ongoing controversies, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Monday that accounting firm KMPG will not renew their sponsorship for an event associated with Andrew.