Prince Andrew has "no recollection"

The BBC interview between an unusually respectful Emily Maitlis and the Duke of York/Prince Andrew covered most of the questions begging to be asked about his friendship with Jeffry Epstein, convicted sex offender, and the allegations that he supplied the prince with an under-age girl for sex. But the interview achieved nothing by way of revelation or admission of guilt or regret or acknowledgment ofanything notable. It was full of words but by the end of it I felt it had all been rather pointless. However, there were two words which stuck in my mind which seemed both bizarre and inappropriate. When asked about his alleged sexual relations with 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, and in particular the photograph of him seemingly standing next to her with his arm around her waist, the prince said he had "no recollection" of ever having met her. Maybe these are the two words he was advised by lawyers to use but to me it seemed strange that he should pick "no recollection" rather than, say, "I've never met this girl in my life," or, "this is completely false, I have never been photographed with my arm around this girl...or any girl". Does "no recollection" mean "I don't remember" or does it mean "nothing I have done in the last 30 years bears any resemblance to what you can see in this picture"? The trouble with the interview was that however many times Maitlis asked the same question, Prince Andrew was not going to say: "this girl is a liar and this picture is a fake". That would have laid down a sort of princely gauntlet, and lawyers would have been watching for that. Virginia Roberts/now Giuffre had given a well-publicised television interview in the US in which she said she had been told she was going to meet a prince and subsequently had sex with Andrew on three occasions. If this is false, as the prince seems to be implying, then he has been massively defamed. But all he could say, on numerous occasions, was that he had no recollection of ever meeting her let alone anything else. Unless I missed it, I don't think Maitlis asked the prince about the other picture, showing Andrew waving from the front door of Epstein's house in New York at a girl who was seen leaving the residence. I would love to have known whether he had any recollection of that little wave. Maitlis did her best - she is an excellent presenter/interviewer on BBC Newsnight - but the question and answer session inside Buckingham Palace with royal portraits on the walls and expensive carpet on the floor, was almost doomed to be disappointing, which it was. Nothing was really resolved. I fear that Prince Andrew, while insisting on his innocence, didn't do so robustly enough to make it all go away.