The prince gave the interview despite advice. His responses range from gormless to stupid to embarrassing to self-serving, even comic. But it’s what is absent that tells us most about the man. Not once in nearly an hour did he ever express any real concern, regret or sorrow, about the victims of Epstein. Not once. Yes, Epstein “conducted himself in a manner unbecoming”. Yes but I was friends with him long before he became a convicted sex offender is the gist of his response to Maitlis. “I kick myself on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal Family and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that.” Prince Andrew, inside the mansion of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, appears to wave goodbye to a woman. Credit:Mail on Sunday As simple as that. His regrets are entirely on his own behalf or on behalf of his firm. He now realises he should never have stayed at the home of a convicted sex offender. In his own words: “At the end of the day, with a benefit of all the hindsight that one can have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But at the time I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do and I admit fully that my judgment was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable but that's just the way it is.”

Loading Too honourable, although not yet honourable enough to express concern for the girls and women who were trafficked by Epstein, a notorious paedophile. For me, though, the central part of this story is not that Prince Andrew continued to have a friendship with Epstein. Those men with generations of privilege are immune to the concerns of the rest of us and untroubled by social mores. Their lives are both supercharged and protected by money and status. What is far more troubling is the way in which he engages with the accusations against him. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. I have no memory of the woman. It’s a blatant display of erasure, an act with which we have become more familiar since the election of Donald Trump as President of the US. The pain and suffering of women never happened. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor remains utterly unaccountable for his actions. He has no recollection of even meeting Virginia Giuffre yet faced with a photograph, he questions its authenticity. Says he doesn’t do the public displays of affection.

We haven’t yet heard his response to being faced with vast numbers of photos of him engaging in those exact public displays of affection. Faced with an exact time when the sexual assault took place (the club Tramps, in 2001), he returns with a precise recollection of visiting a pizza place in Woking, where he went to a kids’ party with his daughter. He claims he doesn’t know where the bar is in Tramps and he doesn’t drink. When asked if he had a message for Virginia Giuffre, he replied: “I don't have a message for her because I have to have a thick skin. If somebody is going to make those sorts of allegations then I've got to have a thick skin and get on with it but they never happened.” I can’t know whether Prince Andrew sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre. I wasn’t there and it is now her word against his. But I hear her. I hear what she says and I hear the voices of the other women who are confirmed as victims of Epstein’s. Mountbatten-Windsor doesn’t. He is tone deaf to the accusations and that’s his right, of course, but it isn’t right. He hasn’t had his day in court but he’s had his day in the court of public opinion where he displays disregard for those who suffered if not at his own hand, at the hands of someone who he considered a friend. Maitlis gave him one last chance to make good on that. She asked: "I wonder if you have any sense now of guilt, regret or shame about any of your behaviour and your friendship with Epstein?"