In light of recent events, releases, and revelations, I think we need to talk about the time my mama got former prince Andrew in trouble with the Queen.
I actually started writing this piece a couple of years ago after I read Spare. So much of what Prince Harry revealed about how the royal family operates reminded me of Mama’s own brush with royalty.
I came back to this story after reading Virginia Giuffre’s heartbreaking memoir this year.
Giuffre’s initial meeting with Andrew when she was seventeen was captured in a photo taken by Jeffrey Epstein himself.
Andrew met Epstein in 1999 through his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the infamous madam who is also in the picture. Giuffre’s memoir paints Andrew as a predator, obviously, but more than that, it paints him as a spoiled brat and a jackass.
One thing I’ve noticed in recent takedowns of rich and powerful men is that while all of them are evil, a lot of them are also buffoons. Are you telling me that you are so out of touch with how the world works that you didn’t anticipate how constant documentation of your daily life could lead to your eventual demise?
Anyway, due to my family lore, I’ve followed Andrew’s demise over the years, and nothing I’ve learned is surprising. I present to you, dear readers, the legend of “The Pop-Eyed Prince.”
Picture it: Pensacola, 1980. A young Prince Andrew flies into town for a three week tour of duty aboard a naval aircraft carrier. Mama was a photojournalist for the Pensacola News Journal at the time, so she was one of many photographers waiting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station for the shot.
After working a 2-10 shift that included being bullied by British paparazzi and finally getting the same shot as everyone else, my mom and her friend, an AP photographer who had shown her how to discreetly use her thumb to smudge pushy British photographers’ lenses with nose grease, decided to commiserate at her favorite hole in the wall.
One of Andrew’s biographers called Trader Jon’s the “naughtiest nightspot in town,” but my mom always made it out to be a dive bar that…occasionally had barely covered go-go dancers. I never got to visit the bar before it closed in 2003, but I always pictured an Egan’s or Downtown Pub vibe. My parents were regulars. They even took my sweet grandparents a time or two, so how naughty could it have been?
At any rate, it was a popular late night spot for military folks and reporters. As the exotic dancers did their thing, Mama’s friend leaned over and asked if she had her rig, because the prince himself had just walked in. Mama’s camera was out in the car, so she slipped out of the bar to go get it.
Now one thing to know about mama back then was she rarely dressed or looked much like a professional photographer, not the least because she was a young woman and didn’t go in for being weighed down with multiple Nikons. So when she walked back into the bar in her cute little sundress with one camera dangling from her shoulder, she didn’t get noticed much by his handlers at the end of the bar.
As this princely entourage was leaving Trader’s, Randy Andy’s bodyguards blocked the shot they had promised the AP photographer, but didn’t consider the girl. Imagine that.
Then Mama did what any baddie would do. She brought up her Nikon, focused on the scoundrel with the whites of eyes showing as he desperately tried to escape accountability, and fired off numerous shots, unsure of whether she got the shot until she processed the film the next day. She found the nice sharp photo that would earn Andrew the moniker “Pop-eyed Prince,” and it ran big on the next day’s front page.
After that, she was flooded with British paps saying, “‘elloooo love” and offering exorbitant amounts of money for an exclusive of the photo she took. Because my mother has integrity and because her friend had been so helpful, she sold the picture to AP for a modest sum and it ran in all the tabloid British press and other places in the world. Prince Andrew got censured by the Queen, and the rest is Pensacola history.
I have repeated this story over the years, and while several (albeit questionable) sources corroborate it, the picture itself is seemingly nowhere to be found on the internet. Most of the ad-filled tabloid websites that mention the event cite a 1983 biography that is also difficult to find, at least at a reasonable price.
Mama feels like the photo is somewhere among the enormous collection of prints, film, slides, negatives, tear sheets and other photographic detritus she can’t quite dispose of. We couldn’t find it during my recent trip home; however, I feel like the “Pop-Eyed Prince” must still be at home.
I have searched every database I have available to me, including the Auburn University Library, and all I can find are a few innocent pictures of ol’ dude playing sailor.
This is the part in the composition that I was planning to reveal, for the first time on the internet that I know of, “The Pop-Eyed Prince.” Unfortunately, much like the mess that is our government, Mama and I need a little more time to look through her files and find what we’re looking for.
Which is a shame, because I was planning a whole extortion scheme. My mother may have integrity, but I don’t. I can be bought. The economy is a mess, and I recently found out that the degree I just learned statistics for is no longer considered professional.
The royals claim to have cut ties with Andrew, but last I heard they were still letting him live on family property, and that’s textbook enabling. Hell, for all I know, King Charles himself slipped into my parents’ attic like some kind of ninja and extracted it.
But that will have to wait, I reckon. When we do find it, I will release it exclusively to The Alabama Take, and then I will take it down—for the right price.
Until then, I guess we will have to settle for the highly redacted Epstein files for literally a million other pictures of Andrew being an evil, sweaty, misogynistic dork.
If any of the royals are reading this, I know you have that picture. Release the Trader Files, you cowards!