‘You’d think Prince Andrew would apologise,” says Frankie Boyle. He’s midway through his timely lament about what he takes to be the misogynistic, thick, inegalitarian non-entities of Britain’s monarchy, shortly before the fatuous institution’s continued existence is solemnised with Charles III’s coronation. “I apologise after consensual sex.”
And yet, for all the Glaswegian comedian’s republican posturing, there is a queasy sense that if Prince Andrew didn’t exist, Boyle would have to invent him. The Duke of York is the comedy gift that keeps giving. Symbols are important to the royal brand, Boyle tells us. Consider Prince Charles’s crest before he became King. It “shows a lion mounting another lion while a horse looks patiently on. Whereas the Duke of York’s shows a lion paying £12m to a sex-trafficked lion cub the lion claims he never met.”
