It is tempting to imagine Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson enduring a mutually resentful existence in Royal Lodge. Like an aristocratic version of Roald Dahl’s The Twits, perhaps. Or, to be vulgar, one might call them The Twats instead. The less-than-grand old Duke of York has now spent several years beset by stories linking him to disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, and there seems to be no way back for him in any kind of public role. Yet, at the beginning of the week, he might have thought the tide had turned for a couple of days. For once, it was Fergie who was bearing the brunt of deeply unflattering headlines when it emerged that, after publicly denouncing Epstein as a sex offender in 2011, she had sent him a grovelling email describing him as a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’.
