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Prince Andrew is under fire and I’m loving every minute of it.

The royal known as ‘Randy Andy’ and ‘Air Miles Andy’ has skirted responsibility for his actions for decades, although that may finally be changing.

Last week, he was stripped of all his royal patronages and military affiliations with the Queen’s approval as he awaits trial in a sexual abuse lawsuit.

It’s believed that the Duke will privately retain his titles inside the Palace and thus unfortunately won’t have to bow to other members of the family.

Andrew has led a lavish lifestyle with somewhat mysterious funding but if mother dearest decides it’s time to close the money taps then he’s really in the dwang.

It’s now being reported, ahead of the release of a new documentary, Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile, that the Duke may actually have dated Ghislaine Maxwell.

This via The Telegraph:

Euan Rellie, a banker who befriended Maxwell during their university years, socialised with the heiress, her disgraced ex-boyfriend Jeffery Epstein, and the Duke…

“I got the sense that Prince Andrew and Ghislaine had probably been girlfriend and boyfriend in the past. They had an easy warmth around each other.”

Nothing about that would be surprising.

Maxwell has had a sorry few weeks, being found guilty on charges including sex trafficking underaged girls for which she is looking at up to 65 years in jail.

The documentary also features Paul Page, who worked in the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command between 1998 and 2004 and first met Maxwell in 2001:

“From the way she was allowed to enter and exit the palace at will, we realised and suspected that she may have had an intimate relationship with Prince Andrew.

“A colleague of mine remembered her coming in four times in one day. She kept coming in and out, in and out.”

Page says the Duke’s fixation on his teddy bear collection was something else that stuck with him.

The Daily Mail with more:

…the Duke of York would ‘shout and scream’ if his teddy bear collection was knocked out of place by palace maids…

He claimed that Andrew had a bed with ’50 or 60′ stuffed toys and maids were given a laminated picture so each bear could carefully be put back in its original position.

A giant manchild with no idea of how the real world works, everybody.

Page isn’t the only person to openly talk about Andrew’s strange teddy bear obsession.

Writer Elizabeth Day said the Duke had told her it was a wedding gift from ex-wife Sarah Ferguson:

‘It seemed rather strange to me that a grown man should be so amused by the presence of a stuffed toy, but I suppose the English upper classes have a long history with teddy bears used as transitional objects to express emotions they might feel uncomfortable with.

‘I wondered if this was someone who had never really grown up because he had never had to. Here he was, taking up space in his mother’s house, carrying out a made-up job to keep him entertained and still having a teddy bear his ex-wife had given him. It was weird.’

I consider pretty much everything the British Royal Family does to be a “made-up job” but those ribbons won’t cut themselves.

A senior defence source is quoted as saying that Andrew was “tearful” when he was told of the decision to strip his titles publicly.

Imagine the waterworks when he’s found guilty of sexual abuse and worse.

[sources:telegraph&dmail]