Prince Andrew 'knows there's no way back for him', sources say

Sources close to Prince Andrew have revealed he knows there is 'no way' for him to curry favour with the public, as a new TV drama raises fresh questions about his relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 

The disgraced Duke was forced to step back from public duties in 2019, following a car crash interview with the BBC. 

A new Amazon TV show starring Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew will re-examine the allegations that he had sex with then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre in 2001, after she was trafficked around the world by Epstein and his lover Ghislaine Maxwell. 

Sources close to the Duke of York told the Sun he has admitted that he knows he will never be able to return to public life. 

'[The Duke] knows there is no way back for him, even before this latest indignity. 

'The public made up their mind long ago and even his own family have an arms length relationship with him. 

'It really is all over for him', the source added. 

Prince Andrew's disastrous interview was the subject of a Netflix movie, Scoop, which followed the process by which the BBC secured an interview with Prince Andrew. 

Emily Maitlis, who took the interview, admitted recently that she thought she was going to be sacked after it was aired.  

She said: 'You don't go into an interview with the royal family without thinking you could lose your job.

'But you know, that's almost a very real possibility - the stakes are high. 

'We knew that if the tone had been wrong, if the facts had been wrong, if the questioning had been wrong - that would have been the end of me and the team at the BBC.

'As it turned out, the ramifications were different. But we were highly aware of it.'

She also revealed that Prince Andrew actually wanted to spend even more time talking about sweating and Pizza Express.

Of Prince Andrew's request, she said: 'Once we'd finished the interview, I said as a courtesy, ' Is there anything that didn't get included that you wanted to discuss?' and Prince Andrew said, 'Well actually, there were a couple of things. You didn't include my alibi'.

'He wanted to talk about the fact that he'd been at Pizza Express on the night in question.

'And it was a very complicated moment for us because, on the one hand, I knew that if he included some of the stuff that he wanted to talk about, for example the sweating and the Pizza Express alibi, it was not going to help his case, in fact, it was actually going to make it look worse.'

Emily added: 'I felt kind of a responsibility to not let him walk into that, but on the other hand, I also felt a responsibility to include the things that he had said were important to him to say.'