Eviction concludes fall from grace for Queen’s favourite son

Whatever will a chap do now there is no longer a vast Royal Lodge in which to play hide-and-seek and similar games with assorted international pleasure-seekers, some of them unmentionable these straitened days.

And where will Fergie lay her head? She may be one’s former wife but after all these entertaining years, she clearly remains a jolly good companion and reliable, if not frolicsome, long-term lodge-mate.

Poor plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

He finds himself cast on the street – or, to be accurate, the wilds of King Charles’s 8000-hectare Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, which to a fellow like Andrew must be akin to the ends of the Earth, it being fully 160 kilometres from the Royal Lodge, his 30-room rent-free home in Windsor Park for the past 20 years.

The horror: to be aged 65 with no visible means of support, though that’s not entirely a new circumstance for this Windsor.

Mummy was always there to bail him out with a quiet million or 10 when he got himself into a spot of bother, which sometimes appeared to be about every second day.

How he must miss Mummy, who forgave him everything ever since he was her favourite baby, even if he was given to throwing all his dollies out of the cot.

Fortunately, there was, it is alleged, always a quiet – very quiet – Chinese friend or two to assist after Mummy passed on. And mysterious others seemed willing to fling Andrew so many international plane tickets for alleged “business trips” he became known to the cursed press as “Air Miles Andy”.

All quite handy, really, once big brother the King began to lose patience and eventually, it is said, called Barley Charley on the million-pound annual allowance he was siphoning to the bothersome sibling when he was still called prince and disporting himself in the manner of various royal chaps since the Battle of Hastings.

Still, as Plain Andrew Windsor sets about packing his entitled life into the cardboard boxes supplied by Sandringham Estate Removals to the Gentry, he has his memories to be going on with.

Randy Andy the Party Prince, they used to call him, he might smile to himself. And by Jove, those couple of happy years with the beauteous Koo Stark, actor, model and photographer. If only Mummy hadn’t interfered, things might have been different. Upstanding girl, that Koo, even though he’d married Fergie instead.

He’d ever be grateful when, 32 years after their blissful time together, the loyal Ms Stark rushed to his defence declaring he was a good man and really, how dare the world believe the lurid tales concerning his relationship and what have you with a Mr Epstein and a Miss Ghislaine Maxwell.

Everyone’s been picking on him, and Andy, pretty clearly, can’t quite understand it.

Why, what about his big brother, Charles, bringing dishonour on the monarchy when he got pinged for drinking a cherry brandy in a pub when he was underage?

And how about all the years of those late-night phone calls and quite a lot more with Camilla when Charles was married to Diana, whom he met when she was 16 and was dating her sister, Sarah. Hmmm?

Nephew Harry was quite the tearaway, too. Didn’t anyone remember how he got away with wearing a Nazi uniform to one of those parties he attended when he was trying to out-do Uncle Randy Andy?

Crikey, Daddy was known to be a bit more than just a lad about town during his early years of marriage to Mummy, too, wasn’t he? Did he lose his sleeping quarters at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace and Balmoral?

Not a chance. The press spent most of their time almost breaking their necks looking the other way during Daddy Philip’s salad days.

And now, after all these years, Andrew is no longer a prince, no longer a resident of Windsor Park and doomed to live in exile in windblown Norfolk.

Oh, it won’t be in a hovel and he’ll have a stipend from his brother to pay for the milk and bread, and despite it all, he’s still eighth in line to succeed to the throne if things were to work out very poorly indeed for his relatives.

And we’d imagine Fergie might tag along to Sandringham Estate, having lost her digs at Royal Park, too. But still.

Andrew would surely be sweating tears if only, as he once explained delicately to the BBC, he hadn’t lost the ability of oozing any sweat at all since those over-exciting times hurtling through the skies above the bothersome Falklands, avoiding the fire of Argentine fighter jets.

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