Throwing Andrew under a bus – by Duncan Harley


What a state the place is in. As an election looms, yet another presidential visit is on the cards and the media is replete with tales of blue-blooded transgressions.
You have to hand it to the Royals. When they are up, they are up, and when they are down, they are down. And when they are only halfway up, they are neither up nor down.
Somewhat famously, Meghan is at odds with Associated Newspapers over claims that her tiny rural cottage @ Frogmore suffered renovations funded by the tax-payer to the tune of one cheap as chips copper bath plus the small matter of £500k worth of sound-insulation targeted at those nasty proles over at Heathrow. You can’t put a value on a good night’s sleep after all.

Meanwhile Andrew is suffering memory loss over allegations of unsubstantiated impropriety with a seventeen-year-old Floridian in some lost year or other. He obviously needs to check with his press-secretary regarding his movements during the year in question. Surely it can’t be that difficult to track the Royal engagements. Don’t they maintain an official diary?

Meantime the monarch is about to have another audience with Trump and Melania.
Then, of course, post-election she will no doubt require to engage yet again with that Boris laddie before agreeing with Corbyn that a new government is the order of the day.

I well recall meeting Andrew, @ some awful public event over at Haddo some years ago. We had been lined up for presentation to various Royals and Annie Lennox was about to give a speech. She never got around to singing and appeared to be under the weather. But I recall her saying something like ‘Yoos had better listen or else. Cause if you don’t then it’ll all go pear-shaped!’
Andrew and a brother then sped past with a smile and a firm handshake – yes, York does indeed have thick fingers. And in the morning, various Champagne corks littered the lawn alongside the official marquee.

I expect that, some thirty years on, Annie might well say the same thing. But hey, to this day, I have no idea what she meant.
If I didn’t know better, I might imagine that throwing Andrew under a bus was just a piece of smoke and mirrors designed to cloud both his alleged proclivity and draw attention away from the real business of the upcoming election.

Probably the final end of the monarchy. Roll on the glorious 12th.

Duncan Harley is a theatre critic and author. His books - The Little History of Aberdeenshire and The A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire – are available from Amazon

Location: Scotland, UK

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