Prince Andrew once called a member of staff a ‘fat lardy a***hole’ and was the ‘most unpopular royal’, former protection officer claims

Prince Andrew was ‘rude’ to royal staff and once called someone a ‘fat, lardy a***hole’, a former protection officer has claimed.

Paul Page, who served at Buckingham Palace between 1998 and 2004, said in new Channel 5 documentary that the Queen’s second son once verbally attacked a fellow protection officer during a fit of rage.

In the unique TV experiment, which airs tonight at 9pm, Prince Andrew’s reputation is placed under the microscope in a staged trial featuring a a group of jurors and two of the country’s most eminent barristers.

Faced with a defence, led by Jeremy Dein KC, and prosecution led by Bill Clegg KC, jurors were presented with various pieces of evidence and asked to decipher whether Andrew was a ‘liability’ to the royal family.

In a video shown to the mock jury, the former protection officer said the Prince was widely regarded as one of the ‘least popular royals’ because he was ‘rude’ to staff members.  

‘Prince Andrew would often lose his temper over very small things,’ he claimed. 

‘His attitude was such that he would look down on all members of staff. Not just maids or police but his own private secretaries.’

The former officer recalled one incident when the disgraced Prince verbally attacked one female member of staff.

‘On this occasion a female turned up and we said: “We’re really sorry but we just need to get confirmation that someone’s going to come and meet you or that you are expected”,’ he recalled in his account. 

‘And so she offered to phone Prince Andrew on her mobile which she did. She put it [the call] on loud speaker so we could hear him and he said, “Put the officer on the phone” and so it was handed over to my colleague and he said, “Listen to me you fat lardy a***hole, they’re not going to come down here”.

‘He was the most unpopular royal in the Palace,’ he said.

Page, who has previously described instances of Andrew’s abrasive demeanor towards staff, called him a ‘rude and obnoxious and self-entitled individual’.

‘That’s the real Prince Andrew,’ he said in the interview presented to the faux jury.

At the end of the documentary, having been presented by evidence on both sides, the jury were unable to come to a unanimous decision as to whether Prince Andrew was a liability to the royal family. 

During previous interviews, Page has accused the royal of instructing police officers to ‘f**k off’ following an incident where the duke sparked a security scare outside the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace.

The Duke of York’s previously had his own rooms at Buckingham Palace, where he would frequently stay when he was in London.

Page, who worked at the Palace for six years, called the prince a ‘f**king a**hole’, ‘rude’ and a ‘bully’. He said the alleged incident was typical behaviour for Andrew.

The allegations came after the duke sensationally demanded a ‘trial by jury’ to tackle allegations made by a Jeffrey Epstein ‘sex slave’ head-on. 

Page told The Sun at the time: ‘It was at night, and we were checking CCTV in the control room when we saw a man walking along the corridor in the Queen’s private quarters. Her Majesty was not at Buckingham Palace at the time, so this was a major potential security scare. A sergeant, myself, and two other police officers went to her apartments to investigate.

‘We approached from either end of the corridor so we could surround the potential intruder. But when we got there, we realised it was Prince Andrew.

‘He looked scruffy and was wearing a tracksuit. I apologised and said, “I’m sorry, your Highness, we went to investigate a possible intruder in Her Majesty’s apartments. Andrew replies, “This is my house, I go where I want, now f**k off”’.

The mix-up followed a series of attempted and successful break-ins at Buckingham Palace, most infamously by Michael Fagan in 1982 – in which the painter and decorator, from Clerkenwell, managed to reach the Queen’s bedroom and speak to her in an astonishing breach of security.

The shocking moment is dramatised in season four of the Netflix show The Crown – although Fagan said in an interview in 2002 that he did not have a long in-depth conversation with the monarch, as the episode suggested.

‘I never had any problems with any other members of the Royal Family in my time at Buckingham Palace,’ Page said.

‘The Queen is a lovely lady. But Prince Andrew had this nasty side to him, he treated staff terribly. He got away with it for so long.’

A spokesperson for Andrew made no comment about Page’s claims when approached by The Sun.

In 2009, Page was embroiled in his own controversy when he was jailed for his part in a £3million property scam that saw him set up a sham company to trick colleagues, friends, and family into giving him money.

Page was interviewed by ITV’s Ranvir Singh for the documentary Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile in 2022.

In the interview, he claimed the duke would have a tantrum and ‘shout and scream’ if his ‘huge collection of teddy bears’ was positioned out of place by royal servants. He also claimed Andrew had a picture in a drawer next to his bed showing his 50 to 60 bears in the correct position.

Page has also called for a royal bullying probe into Andrew similar to that faced by Meghan Markle, The Mirror reported. The Duchess of Sussex has denied bullying claims as smears.

Prince Andrew on Trial will air on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight.