AMANDA PLATELL: The radical step Charles must take over Andrew

Three cheers for King Charles after he finally cut off profligate Prince Andrew, withdrawing his annual £1million allowance, having already stopped funding his security detail worth a substantial six-figure sum.

He was right to remove the royal sponger’s financial support. But now it’s time for the King to go further – and show some real gumption.

He should hand his arrogant, entitled younger brother an eviction notice to kick him out for good from 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park and to send him into the far smaller home Harry and Meghan vacated – Frogmore Cottage.

Every day he remains at Royal Lodge it’s a stain on the monarchy.

Not just because the British public long ago grew tired of the disgraced prince and his ex-wife Fergie living in a mansion fit for a king.

The late Queen Elizabeth also wanted Andrew out of Royal Lodge, as was damningly revealed in the Mail on Saturday by Robert Hardman in his updated biography, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.

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He may have been the Queen’s favourite son, yet even ‘mummy’ had decided a year before she died that she had to move him out of the grandeur of Royal Lodge into Frogmore Cottage which is also in Windsor Great Park.

The irony is that Prince Andrew thought he was safe in Royal Lodge for as long as the late Queen was alive and picking up the tab for his enormous security detail and his lavish expenses, but despite her evident affection for him, even she had wised up to what a bad look it was for her son to still be enjoying such largesse.

‘It was her plan to move him out, to end the lease for the Sussexes at Frogmore Cottage and to move Andrew in there,’ a former close personal adviser to Elizabeth II told Hardman: ‘Had she lived another year, he would have been out.’

They added: ‘It was mainly a money thing, as she could see it was becoming unsustainable.’

The late Queen surely also appreciated how inappropriate it would appear for the firm to allow this self-indulgent, pointless prince to be living in a vast property, even as her subjects were enduring a devastating post-Covid cost of living crisis and the monarchy had been rocked by the Sussexes’ departure and Harry’s vicious attacks.

Indeed, Royal Lodge is so grand that George VI and the late Queen Mother lived there after the abdication in 1936, and she cherished it as her private residence until she died in 2002.

Perhaps the late Queen was still smarting after bailing out Andrew by reportedly contributing to the some £12million he paid to settle his sexual abuse lawsuit with one of his former friend Jeffrey Epstein’s victim, Virginia Giuffre – claims he denies.

Whatever, it appears that she was as repulsed we all were – and still are – by Andrew’s extravagance and sense of entitlement.

It beggars belief that after all he has put the family through and after he has been stripped of royal duties and his official HRH title, that he continues to live in Royal Lodge as his right. I also find it absurd, incidentally, that a man so dishonoured that he cannot show his face in polite company nor wear military uniforms for ceremonial events is still eighth in line to the throne.

What right does this self-pitying snob who spends his time watching TV in a darkened room and practising his golf swing think he has to stay in situ in a property worth at least £30million? After all, his sister Princess Anne happily makes do with Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire which is worth about £6million in comparison.

While Andy has been sitting on his fat bottom, his sister last year was the hardest working royal, totting up 457 royal engagements and taking up ever more duties following news that both the King and Princess Catherine were suffering from cancer and the impact of that on their public duties. 

It is clear that Andrew does not have the finances for the upkeep of Royal Lodge in any case. Pictures of its exterior this week showed patches of damp, moss-covered walls, and areas of plaster peeling off.

Andrew’s assurances that he can maintain the property, with a combination of money left to him by the Queen and his own commercial activities, don’t wash anymore in royal circles.

Firstly, insiders say any legacy left to him by his mother has been long spent. Second, given his disgrace after consorting with Epstein and taking trips on the convicted paedophile’s private jet, precious few self-respecting businessfolk seem prepared to engage with him.

Now that King Charles has reportedly read him the riot act and cut him off, neither can he use his royal position for profit as he once did.

And yet he still doesn’t get it. He is said to have informed the monarch that, ‘regardless of any ultimatum, he was going to stay put at Royal Lodge anyway’.

The King should now up the ante, and treat his worthless brother as any property owner would an errant tenant. He should serve him with an eviction notice under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988.

In 1982 Prince Andrew was riding high after distinguishing himself as a helicopter pilot as part of the Royal Navy task force dispatched The Falklands to evict the Argentine invaders.

He was rightly considered a hero then. Now, however, through his own bad judgment, his association with a criminal like Epstein and his inability to realise he’s no longer a valued member of the Royal Family, he is a pariah.

I have a suggestion for Charles. If Andrew continues to play up over his departure from Royal Lodge and refuses Frogmore, send him to one of the many vacant cottages on the Balmoral Estate. He can spend his days watching TV in a darkened room up there – and, when he surfaces, play golf at Scotland’s famous Old Course at St Andrews.

That’s if the revered golf club would have him.