Like the Queen with her spare, Princess Diana indulged her own by allowing him to run wild. In Andrew’s case, he was always the Queen’s favourite child - to the point that he was encouraged to kiss her on both cheeks, while Prince Charles just bowed. The first thing to be said is they were both Mummy’s boys. And, of course, much of this goes back to their over-indulged childhoods. Tales abounded, meanwhile, of the rudeness of both uncle and nephew, and of their sense of entitlement.
In their youth, both led rackety lives - dating strings of beautiful women and revelling in their reputation as handsome playboys.
Both fell in love with minor American actresses - Meghan Markle and Koo Stark. Some of the parallels between them are uncanny. Doubtless those stories made a great impression on the young prince, who’d later have his own tales to recount about shooting Afghan insurgents from a helicopter. Time and again, he’d get his uncle to talk about his heroics as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands war - which Andrew, of course, was only too willing to do.
When Harry was a boy they bonded over their mutual interest in military feats. It’s easy to forget it now, but there had been a time when they were both liked by the public and were close to each other. The survey ranked the two princes among the three least popular royals (the Duchess of Sussex had an 18 per cent rating). In a poll of 11,450 people commissioned by former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, only 22 per cent had a ‘favourable’ view of Harry, while just seven per cent could bear to favour Andrew. The depth of the public’s disapproval of its two errant ‘spares’ to the throne was revealed by the Mail yesterday. These days, just about the only thing that unites them is their status as royal outcasts - albeit for very different reasons. Hard to imagine now, but Prince Andrew was once a favourite with his rascally young nephew Prince Harry.
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