Prince Andrew used official trips to Thailand to meet ‘floozies’ who were drawn to his royal status, a retired UK official has said.
The former Duke of York, who has relinquished his official titles amid the ongoing allegations about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and sex abuse victim Virginia Giuffre, made a number of private and taxpayer-funded trips to the country over the course of a decade.
The prince is alleged to have met escorts and ‘high society’ Thai ladies drawn to his royal status, including while he was in the country as a roving UK ambassador of trade.
Ian Proud, who was head of the political section at the UK embassy in the city, told Metro that the controversial royal’s playboy lifestyle was common knowledge among staff.
‘The prince would come out principally for royal engagements, such as for the Thai king’s jubilee in 2006, but he also came out after the tsunami, to show support for the Thai government,’ he said.
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‘He also came out on private trips to see his bits of fluff on the side, where we played a much lighter role in stewarding him through.
‘When he was here on official business he very obviously liked to have his own private space, and not to be housed in the embassy itself, but to live off compound. When I was there he preferred a particular high end hotel because he liked the nightclub in the basement there with the floozies and so on.’
In his salacious biography of the prince, Andrew Lownie claims that Andrew had 40 escorts ‘brought to him’ during one trip to Thailand, which was connected to his UK-funded trade ambassador role.
The lurid allegations about his conduct during his jet-setting years has largely remained in the background as the spotlight falls on Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, released in the UK yesterday.
Proud, who would meet and greet the duke on his Thai visits, told Metro that the father-of-two had been ‘larging it’, despite his post coming under scrutiny for the bill to British taxpayers as he flew around the world, earning him the ‘Air Miles Andy’ tag.
Thailand would be the prince’s last port of call under his trade ambassador role in February and March 2012, after which the post was scrapped following a decade of largely taxpayer-funded travels.
‘The prince had one regular lady who he took on a private, side trip to Shanghai, where they stayed in a hotel and used his official car, but otherwise he was basically larging it in the hotel.’ Proud said.
‘He was there on business of course, and he did it very well actually.
‘But when he wasn’t working, he was entertaining himself in other, much more exotic ways, and this is where the book’s descriptions of conveyor belts of women comes in. The Thais revere monarchy — or at least the previous monarch as the jury is out on the current one — and when he wasn’t working he had an open playing field, with people quite happily turning a blind eye because he was a British prince.
‘For the prince, it was a very permissive environment, even though Thailand is actually a very socially conservative country despite the headlines.’
The prince would hang out at a bar and nightclub in the luxury hotel, according to the former man in Bangkok.
‘There would be all these high society Thai women wanting to hang out with a prince,’ Proud said. ‘They were flocking to see him, there was an incredible fascination with him.’
The prince’s playboy lifestyle, which came after his divorce to Sarah Ferguson in 1996, included one outing on a yacht in Phuket.
He was photographed surrounded by topless women on the boat as he holidayed on the island in January 2001.
The British royal was also reportedly seen in bars around a resort town in Phuket, including one staffed by semi-naked dancers.
Proud, who is now a writer and consultant living in Hampshire, is familiar with Lownie’s allegations and only questions whether the prince paid women for their time as he drew on his celebrity status.
‘The only question about the 40 escorts story is whether they were all escorts or were they high-class Thai girls wanting to have a bit of a cuddle with a prince, that’s my personal view,’ he said.
‘The bar was not like some kind of West End nightclub where you have girls hanging round in mini-skirts.’
The retired official, now 57, would check out venues shortly before the prince arrived and also spent time with him at events and at Bangkok’s airport during his time at the embassy between 2003 and 2007.
‘Sometimes there were some embarrassing moments,’ he said.
‘At a British Council event he was talking to a couple of very attractive Thai women from the council when the director taps him on the shoulder and says, “the Thai education minister is here and is very keen to talk to you.”
‘The prince got irritated, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder and telling them, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go and talk to that suit over there!’
‘But generally he was on his best behaviour when he was on official business.’
The globe-trotting trade ambassador role is one of several controversies that have swirled around the prince over the last decade.
His time as the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment took him to Thailand on three occasions, as well as Russia, China, the Middle East and numerous other locations.
The costs included £46,100 on a 13-day tour of south-east Asia in October 2010, data obtained by Metro shows. The hotel bill was £37,000, with £3,800 spent on internal travel and £5,4000 on ‘associated items’ – vaguely defined as ‘communications and allowances’.
‘People were concerned about the eye-watering cost of his role at the time,’ Proud said. ‘Back in those days, before we sold the embassy compound in Bangkok, it was a very grand residence, it was a beautiful 1921 mansion, there was more than enough space for Andrew and his immediate entourage to stay there, but he chose not to, at great expense.
‘That was what annoyed people, that he stayed at these five-star hotels where he was putting it about in the evenings when he could have been staying at the ambassador’s residence.’
Prince Andrew announced on Saturday that he would be giving up his royal titles following ‘discussion with the king’.
‘The media scrutiny of the prince’s affairs was so intense that the king felt he had to do something, and that something was the removal of his titles,’ Proud said.
The move comes amid the continued allegations and testimony from Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, and others about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.
Her book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, details alleged sexual encounters with the royal, who she said ‘believed having sex with me was his birthright.’
The prince has repeatedly and vigorously denied all the allegations.
The Metro has approached his office for comment about the specific Thailand allegations.
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