PRINCE Andrew was an “idiot” for being pals with Jeffrey Epstein but one move made him an even bigger fool, a royal photographer has claimed.
The disgraced Duke of York has been under pressure to quit his Royal Lodge home after King Charles laid off its ten-strong security team.
Charles has been funding private guards at the 31-room Windsor pile since Andrew’s £3million-a-year armed cops were removed in 2022 amid a US sex abuse case.
It came after he vowed to fight accusations of sexual assault by former Epstein slave Virginia Giuffre.
The Duke ended up paying millions of pounds to Ms Giuffre and the case never went to court but he has always denied any wrongdoing.
Jim Bennett, who has been snapping the royal family for years, appeared on The Sun’s Royal Exclusive show to discuss the controversy swirling around Andrew.
During an exclusive conversation with our Royal Editor, Matt Wilkinson, the experienced photographer said that Andrew had been an “idiot”.
Jim said: “He’s sadly lacking in a little bit of guidance.
“I’d just like to say to him that you were an idiot for doing what you did and you were a bigger fool to go back out to America and see Epstein a second time.
“If he had gone out there and said: ‘Look we were good friends but going to give you the old Spanish and you’re going.’
“I just feel like he needs a bit of guidance.
“People have said he’s very arrogant, obviously he must be because of some of the silly things he’s done.
“But on the day that the story broke about Epstein and co, him and Fergie actually sent somebody down with loads of coffee and biscuits for the press down there.”
In the exclusive chat, Jim went on to talk about how he managed to pap a famous picture of the Princess of Wales.
Kate was snapped as she left Windsor in a Land Rover with doting husband William after she bravely announced her cancer diagnosis.
In the photo from March, Kate gazed out of her backseat window and appeared to have her hair tied back in a bun.
The mum-of-three was on her way to a private appointment in London while Wills was headed to a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey later that day.
PRINCE Andrew’s reputation is damaged beyond repair and he will never be able to engineer a return to public life, according to one of Britain’s top PR gurus.
Brand and culture expert Nick Ede, who runs East of Eden PR agency, called the shamed royal “deluded” for thinking he could ever return to royal duties and urged him to give up and ‘enjoy his life’ in exile.
It follows the release of Scoop – a Netflix movie based on the 2019 interview he gave to Newsnight.
Nick said: “There is no way back for him.
“I think you know this perpetual idea that he could still be back. Nobody cares. He hasn’t got fans.
“There’s nobody out there who’s going ‘We want to see Prince Andrew’, not one single person. I think he has to realise that. But I think it’s going to take a long, long time for him to actually understand. It’s very deluded.
“In my opinion, the best thing that he could do is just enjoy his life. He’s got gorgeous daughters. He has a great relationship with Fergie, he has a lovely house.
“Just live a quiet life.”
Reflecting on the interview five years ago – the fallout of which saw Andrew step back from royal duties “for the foreseeable future” – Nick compared the fallout to Frost vs Nixon and said he would have urged him not to do it.
He said: “If I had been advising him, I would say, go quiet, be quiet, just go to ground. You know you’re a prince. Enjoy the life that you lead, but do not open this can of worms, because that’s what it is.
“There was no admission that a relationship with somebody like Epstein was terribly toxic. There was no idea that there were loads of victims of trafficking whose lives were completely ruined by Epstein. He didn’t seem to think that the association he had with that man was anything but positive.
“I think his worst gaffe was obviously being in that interview and agreeing to it in the first place, for not realising that he’s actually going to be interviewed by a very, very good journalist who is going to ask him questions which he might not like.
“But I think what this has done is really shown how archaic Prince Andrew is in his opinions and thoughts.
“Read the room. He’s never read a room at all.”
Shortly after the image was published by all newspapers, Jim was forced to confirm it had “not been doctored”.
And he addressed online sleuths and conspiracy theorists who slandered his picture.
He said: “It was quite funny because I’d never been on that end of it before.
“I kept getting emails from these people saying ‘You’re a fraud. You’re a cheat. You’ve Photoshopped her into the picture. We’ve worked out the bricks in the wall’.”
Jim added on that day he was only out with the intention of snapping Wills and had no idea Kate would be next to him.
He explained the image was lightened in Photoshop to make it clearer – but that it was never changed.
Jim continued: “My colleague was driving, I was in the passenger seat, so I jumped out the car and literally as this car come round the corner I got the pictures.
“My colleague said ‘Have you got William?’ and I said ‘Yeah great, we’ve got William, fine’.
“So we disappear to start looking at the pictures and then we notice there’s somebody sitting next to him.
“So we lighten the picture a little bit in Photoshop and sure enough it’s Kate.
“We then alert the office to let them know that she may be going to Westminster Abbey, because nobody knew to the extent of how ill she was, and then we sent a picture to you [The Sun’s Royal Editor Matt Wilkinson] to confirm it.”
