In an interview with the BBC that was unprecedented because of the nature of its subject matter, Prince Andrew said he “let the side down” by staying at the New York home of Jeffrey Epstein after he was released from jail having served jail time after pleading guilty to a charge of paedophilia.

He repeatedly denied claims that he himself engaged in sex with underage girls or women, and rebutted accusations from a one accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has alleged she was forced by Epstein to act as his “sex slave”, and that she had sex with the British royal on three occasions as a minor, including once at an orgy on Epstein’s private Caribbean island.

“I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened,” Prince Andrew said in the interview that was recorded at Buckingham Palace on Thursday and broadcast on Saturday night.

Indeed, he claimed he could not have done so because on the night she alleged he did, was actually eating dinner at a Pizza Express in the town of Woking, with one of his two daughters, Princess Beatrice. At the time of the meal in 2001, Beatrice would have been aged 13, four years younger than Ms Roberts Giuffre.

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“I was with the children and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose, sort of, four or five in the afternoon,” he said. “And then because the duchess [of York] was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away, the other one is there.”

Yet a lawyer for his accuser, who has also gone by the name Virginia Roberts, was unimpressed by the prince’s high-profile interview, apparently conducted after months of negotiations, and with the approval of the Queen.

Lawyer Jack Scarola told Mail Online he would like the duke to submit to an interview “under oath” instead of giving statements to the media.

“I believe there is an ongoing investigation in New York by the FBI under the supervision of the US attorney’s office into those involved in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse,” he said.

“I would love to see Prince Andrew submit to an interview under oath with the investigating authorities. Talking to the media doesn’t quite cut it. Statements that are not under oath carry little weight.”

He added: “Andrew would be considered at the least a key witness. I doubt that he is a target of the investigation but it is possible.”

Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in New York in August, the authorities launched an investigation into both the circumstances of his death, and into potential accomplices. He had been arrested in July and charged with sex trafficking charges that accused him of abusing dozens of underage girls as young as 14. Epstein had been charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking with underage females, and had pleaded not guilty.

(Statista (Statista)

Those charges came 11 years after Epstein’s lawyers cut a plea deal with prosecutors in Florida to avoid a similar charge. As controversy over that plea deal mounted this summer following the new charges, the lawyer who oversaw the deal, Alexander Acosta, who went on to become Donald Trump’s labour secretary, was forced to stand down.

A post mortem examination of Epstein concluded he took his own life.

Prince Andrew was among a number of high profile figures to have once been friends or associates of the financier, among them Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. As such, the link to Buckingham Palace has always been bigger news in Britain than in the US.

Prince Andrew: I stayed at convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's house because I am 'too honorable'

That is not to say, Americans are not interested in the British royal family – they are, despite having rather decisively rejected King George III in 1776. Yet, that interest is not uniform; they were always more interested in Princess Diana, for instance, than they were in Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

A new generation, or at least elements of it, have become enthralled by the soap opera dramas relating to Harry, William, Kate and Meghan.

In contrast, the 59-year-old Prince Andrew, would probably rate as a C-list celebrity. Indeed, his interview with the BBC has yet to makes waves here, and only the tabloid New York Post has carried a story about his interview on its homepage.

That story related to a revelation he made to the BBC that a Falklands War injury left him medically incapable of “sweating profusely”, a description of him that had been made by his accuser.