Rob Blackhurst

FT Magazine

Jan 06, 2006

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With the red and green Laura Ashley curtains, the gilt mirrors and the deep-pile carpets that absorb all sound apart from the somnolent tick of a grandfather clock, I could be in the chintzy reception of a mid-range country hotel. In the scattered armchairs, an etiolated aristocrat, a shaven-headed naval officer and a well-fed diplomatic delegation from Canada wait their turn to be seen. Everyone sits bolt upright. A man in a scarlet tunic - indistinguishable from a London doorman - hovers expertly. The only clue that we're in the seat of the British monarchy is a brace of unread copies of Royal Insight, the free magazine that promises "news, stories and pictures from the latest Royal events". On the cover is a tanned and grinning Duke of York - or, as he is still better known, Prince Andrew who, it says, has been Britain's "Special Representative for International Trade and Investment" for the past four years.

He is the reason I am in Buckingham Palace's waiting room. After years of avoiding interviews, the royal press office has invited the FT Magazine to follow him on one of his trade promotion trips. These have been a source of ridicule for the tabloids. Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten-Windsor or, as the Daily Mail prefers, "Air Miles Andy", stands accused of using them to visit the world's best golf courses and chartering RAF executive jets as if they were taxis. Royalists, of course, claim that these trips help win orders for British exports - though they never exactly explain how a minor royal with no working knowledge of business can persuade hard-bitten foreign businessmen to buy British. And while it is plausible that the Windsor fairydust helps to sell umbrellas, scotch whisky, shortbread and Fortnum & Mason hampers, doesn't having a royal representing British products also reinforce perceptions that we are class-bound, old-fashioned and unfit for the modern world?

We are due to leave on the Royal Trip to Hungary and Slovakia tomorrow and I have been told to come to the palace for "etiquette lessons". Even now, I'm still not sure whether that was a joke. I am met by the duke's press officer, no drawling courtier, but rather an energetic Australian twentysomething called Samantha Cohen. "It's quite yellow here isn't it?" I say. She laughs. "I know. It's like working in your granny's front-room."

Inside her office, a china tea set and a plate of Duchy Original biscuits in front of us, I meet Bradley Jones, the duke's assistant private secretary. He is the archetypal English civil servant - short, bespectacled, phlegmatic, an indeterminate age between 30 and 40, wearing his intelligence lightly. His skin looks pale with jet-leg - not surprising since he has to carry out a reconnaissance mission to every destination a month before the duke arrives - as well as accompany him on the actual visit.

While I'm fumbling in my bag for a notebook, Samantha begins a high-speed sales patter. "First, let's go through the funding. Everyone gets this wrong." I manage to grasp amid the volley that since the Civil List was pruned in response to the mid-1990s backlash against royalty, Prince Andrew hasn't received a salary directly from the taxpayer, apart from his £20,000 naval pension. The Queen provides a £249,000 annual stipend out of her own funds to "run the duke" - which pays for his office staff, his valet, the upkeep of his residence Royal Lodge at Windsor and, presumably, the odd golf jaunt. Bradley is on loan from the Foreign Office, and a military equerry - who co-ordinates his "regimental" duties - is on loan from the Ministry of Defence. His travel bill is picked up, like that of all royals, by the palace via the Department of Transport. Handily, UK Trade and Investment - the government organisation that he works under - only has to pay his hotel bills, which came to about £75,000 last financial year.

The duke's "special representative for international trade and investment" webpage lists his 250 domestic and five overseas trips - mostly visits to small companies which, the palace claims, find the publicity useful. They hardly evoke glamour: Standard Chartered lunch in London, Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Systems, Loughborough; the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association Show; Pipeline Industries Guild Exhibition; and the intriguingly entitled "Briefing on the Northern Way" in North Yorkshire do not sound as if they afford much opportunity for a round of golf. But what does all this actually achieve? For all his global celebrity at the time of his marriage to Sarah Ferguson in the mid-1980s, what kind of cachet does the second son of a British monarch now have among the new member countries of the European Union?

I'm even more confused when Samantha presents me with an itinerary for our trip. I'd assumed that we would take a contingent of British businessmen selling their wares or, at least, investigating investment opportunities. But on the typed list I see only my name, the private secretary, the press officer and the royal protection officers. Why aren't we taking any business representatives with us?

"We found that when we did that the commercial bang for buck was not high enough for companies to merit flying out," says Bradley. "They were a hassle, the companies involved got a limited amount of face time, and often, because of security considerations and itinerary changes, companies didn't even know if they were going until the last minute. Now we have a more targeted approach."

Our trip is envisaged more as a geopolitical expedition - to play soothing political mood music to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries that have been overlooked by British business and government as attention has focused on their larger neighbours.

Samantha hands me a sheaf of positive articles on the Royal Family from The Times. The hard sell stops. As I get up to leave, she sighs: "You know, he's very straightforward, he's very honest, he's not pretending to be something he's not." On a quick guided tour of his office we are introduced. The duke extends a hand and maintains a military level of eye contact: "Oh, you're the journalist are you?" he says, slightly ironically. Without waiting for an answer, he turns his back and disappears.

A digital indicator on the wall shows we are at 27,000ft.

The RAF fleet of 20-year-old BAE 146 jets - reserved for ferrying royals and the prime minister around - is showing its age. Alarming plumes of white steam flood from the air-con. During the ascent, the engines are making such a roar that we give up on conversation. Prince Andrew is sequestered behind a curtain reading a fat ring-binder file of briefing notes on Hungary and Slovakia and he is sending e-mails via his BlackBerry. He's also possibly eating the Kit Kat Chunky that the RAF crew leave next to him on every flight.

As I'm drifting off to sleep, he pokes his head around the curtain. "Anyone know what "mental furniture" is?" he asks. "It's in my briefing and I thought it could be a spelling mistake. Should it say metal furniture?" I start on an incoherent explanation about it meaning areas of knowledge. With an exaggerated "Oh… I seeeee," he darts back into his territory. Later, without looking at me, he points to my frayed brogues and sing-songs the words "brown shoes" as he passes. I've obviously committed a crime of royal etiquette.

In the flesh, Prince Andrew still looks like he would be most at home wearing epaulettes and scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars. He is bulky and greying but still looks as if he could manage 200 press-ups on the deck at dawn. The two valets he has brought along for this trip (one is apparently undergoing training) are obviously under orders to maintain military standards of pressing and polishing. While his bearing is martial, his mannerisms are far more like those of his older brother. He clasps his hands behind his back, plays with his cuffs and has the same breathy, modulated speaking voice. But where Charles's face stretches into agonised folds, Prince Andrew is more likely to throw his head back and guffaw in a manner more suited to the officers' mess.

Prince Andrew famously hates the press. However, every morning he is brought a copy of "that lovely funny-coloured newspaper" as he likes to call the FT, so we seem to be on safe ground. He has disliked the media ever since an incident in his adolescence when he covered a group of photographers in spray-paint and they failed to see the joke. Nowadays, when he's written about at all, he's usually presented as a sybaritic oaf. The tabloids lapped up pictures of him lounging on the deck of a luxury catamaran, surrounded by topless beauties. But the national newspapers tend to ignore him on his royal duties. The royal correspondents, once so obsessed with Andrew, Fergie, Charles and Diana, are now on permanent Wills and Harry watch.

We're lined up behind Prince Andrew in the aircraft, waiting while the Slovakian ground crew tortuously unfurl the red carpet into place. He fixes a smile - just in case the aircraft door opens unexpectedly - for the handful of local press that have turned up. "Stop pissing around and let me off," he mutters through his teeth to no one in particular. As he shakes hands with the ambassador on the tarmac, we run for the revving people-carrier and dive in. Within seconds, we're moving as part of a convoy - sirens blaring - along a new dual carriageway that takes us away from the outskirts of the capital, Bratislava. On some distant hills we can just make out the ruins of medieval castles. This romantic scene is interrupted every few minutes by huge Tesco billboards in deserted fields. "There's a maxim," says one of our entourage, "the smaller the country, the larger the motorcade and the more aggressively they drive." The Slovakian police have provided us with three escort cars, five outriders and an ambulance. I think the ambulance might be needed as the escort vehicles seem intent on driving any car that comes near us off the road.

Half an hour later, feeling sick from the motorcade's swoops and swerves, we arrive to open a huge new warehouse for Tesco - Slovakia's biggest employer - in the middle of nowhere. We're bundled into a boardroom decked out with Union Jacks and intricately arranged fruit baskets. We're treated to a presentation full of retail industry cliches - ("one of the most competitive markets in Europe… " "in order to improve customer satisfaction… " "we pride ourselves on our pricing policy… ") - and hear about Tesco's plans to increase their market share and beat Lidl, their main competitor. We're shown a map of Tesco branches throughout Slovakia - plotted like a second world war battle plan with pins. "And what's the significance of the blue pins?" asks Prince Andrew. There is a pause. "We ran out of red ones."

We clamber over crates of lettuce. Prince Andrew takes a closer look at a tray of ginger. British ambassador Judith Macgregor, the duke and the head of Tesco Slovakia spend a minute in a huddle discussing its healing properties. Prince Andrew keeps firing questions: "What's the logic behind having 1,200 square feet?" "How do you tell what the customers want?" He's trying hard but it's clear he's one of the few people in Britain not acquainted with shopping in a supermarket.

We step outside where a throng of bored-looking Slovakian workers are gathered around a podium. Prince Andrew steps up and gives a five-minute speech on the virtues of Slovakia for British business. He does affable ceremonial well - embroidering the blandishments typed out for him by the embassy with the odd joke. As the smattering of weak applause dies, a man on a mixing desk next to the stage wears a look of deep concentration. An ear-splitting Bontempi organ fanfare sounds - as if we're in a pantomime. Prince Andrew tugs on the curtain next to him, reveals a brass plaque, steps back, proof-reads it, nods and strides briskly over to the car.

We're driven back into Bratislava to the ambassador's residence overlooking the capital. Royals, including minor members of the Windsor clan, use British embassies as hotels on their visits. As guests are escorted on to the veranda, Prince Andrew disappears for a briefing with the ambassador. The guests all greet each other with a familial ex-pat intimacy: it seems to be the regular crowd of British businessmen and friendly Slovaks who are on the embassy's mailing list. We sit down to eat. The ambassador talks about what a great privilege and pleasure it is for the Duke of York to be here; he replies what a privilege and pleasure it is for him to be here. Like a politician, he has a regular pay-off line: "When there's an investment opportunity there's a Brit there first. Or more accurately, there's usually a Scotsman there first. Followed closely by a Welshman."

Afterwards, as the guests are leaving, I ask the ambassador what a trip like this achieves: "We requested a royal visit because Britain needed some senior representation. In the 1990s there was a reluctance to look towards Britain - other countries like France were nearer and more focused. Who runs the trains and trams in Bratislava is a key investment decision. British companies have a lot of expertise here with public-private partnerships. They're also looking for a regeneration strategy - which Britain can help with too."

The next day we are at the Bratislava offices of Provident Financial, the financial services group. The boardroom is festooned with more Union Jacks and small bottles of mineral water. They have stationed smiling and impeccably dressed employees on each of the five floors we have to ascend. But something's not quite right with the duke. Perhaps he's tired after a euphoric reception at a school earlier in the morning. But he has a hangdog expression, leans on the table with his elbows and clasps his cheek with his right hand.

The nervous senior manager attempts to interest him in "a PowerPoint presentation that we have prepared". "Oh don't worry about that," he snaps, "just tell me about yourselves. Are you leading edge?" No one is sure whether he is being sarcastic. The manager hesitantly continues with the corporate spiel in a Newcastle accent: "We have 90 per cent customer satisfaction - twice what it normally is in the banking sector here… The business lends small amounts - the equivalent of £400 or £500 a time." Prince Andrew interrupts: "So, you encourage people to get into debt do you?" There is some nervous laughter. "No we don't - we encourage responsible lending," replies the manager. He's now reddening and dry mouthed. His hands are shaking. "And what's your interest rate?" "It's 15 per cent, Sir". "FIFTEEN per cent!?" Prince Andrew rolls every syllable around his mouth. "That's a bit steep isn't it?" If he's joking, there is no sign of it on his face.

Then there follows an exchange of Samuel Beckett-esque farce. "Why are you called Provident Financial?" asks Prince Andrew.

"Well in England we've rebranded as Provident because our title is a bit too much of a mouthful, Sir."

"What, Provident Financial, too much of a mouthful?"

"No, Provident Personal Credit was too much a mouthful, Sir".

"So what does Provident mean, then?"

"I don't know, Sir". He looks at the ranks of senior management. They shrug. One of them quietly says: "It's just a title, like."

These are flashes of the slightly grating Windsor humour - famously honed into an art form by his father - which is perhaps a form of defence against the tear-inducing boredom of endless ceremony. He likes ritualised jokes (every time he saw me with my notebooks he'd say: "Got enough paper have you this morning? Do you want me to lend you some?") and enjoys pedantry and mock pomposity. Because they're constantly meeting people who are reluctant to challenge them, they are uniquely able to wind people up. A senior executive at Orange Slovakia told me that at the ambassador's reception Prince Andrew pretended for a full poker-faced 10 minutes to have never heard of Orange, before he burst out laughing.

After a short hop on the plane we're in Hungary for the second half of the visit. The motorcade maxim holds true. In large, self-confident Hungary - courted by old Europe and unfazed by a long acquaintance with royalty - there is no police escort. We visit an environmental exhibition with British companies that are, among other things, manufacturing biological agents that break up chicken fat in drains; generating electricity out of compost; and pioneering solar-powered traffic lights. Prince Andrew is in his element here: it combines his patrician environmentalism with a love of gizmos and gadgetry. "I've recently moved house - and the removal men didn't want their cardboard boxes back," he moans to a recycling company.

At lunch in another anonymous hotel we meet Hungarian ministers and British entrepreneurs who are seeking their fortune in Hungary. Prince Andrew chairs the conversation as if it's a seminar. He begins with his usual disclaimer: "I am by no means expert in any of it - I am not here to transmit - I am here to listen." The businessmen (all 20 around the table are male) have the usual gripes about the growing pains of EU accession. There are complaints about foreign companies poaching Hungarian labour: British builders are identifying the best builders to take home with them by spying on building sites with binoculars. A Chelsea landscape gardener with crisp Edwardian vowels complains that he can't get skilled staff in Hungary ("they don't take gardening seriously - they think it's a lower-class profession").

On the plane back home, an hour from RAF Northolt, I face Prince Andrew across the aisle. Slightly disconcertingly, the rest of the entourage watch my interview, apart from a slumped and snoring royal protection officer. Prince Andrew is trying to define his role: "I can't personally generate inward investment. I might meet somebody, as I did in Chicago last year, who wants to invest in the UK and I say 'That's absolutely wonderful - these are the people you should go and see.' And I'm forever getting short-notice requests to write letters, or to see people in London. In my case I'm often sent in at the vinegar strokes of a deal - right at the end, if you see what I mean."

So can he claim any successes? He speaks slowly. "Everyone is just a small cog. And you cannot claim much responsibility. We probably could claim some success getting British pig exports into China. The exporters came to us with what was a straightforward bureaucratic muddle between Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] and the Chinese authorities. We said, 'No trouble… we'll talk to Defra.' Both sides were being slow and we managed to sort it out. Occasionally one is used to try and convince large companies to come - one writes the odd letter or two. More often though, visits are part of a strategic programme to improve political relations."

And what is the logic in having a hereditary scion promote Britain in countries with no great attachment to the British monarchy? He admits: "There are some emerging markets that one looks at carefully and says, 'Really, can one be of assistance?' We are perhaps less use in Europe because European countries are more attuned to seeing each other's ministers. But in the Middle East and certainly in the Commonwealth there are affinities. We have our uses and our days where we can be very useful."

After a last question, we just have time to fling ourselves into our seats before touchdown. As we taxi to a halt, Prince Andrew's black Jaguar arrives on the tarmac so that he can drive himself back to Royal Lodge. After a final Gilbert and Sullivan bow from the valet in which his head seems to touch the tarmac, a hand-shake for the crew and a distant look, he disappears. Next week he'll be in Oxfordshire to visit the next factory, unveil the next plaque and leave uneaten the next lunch.

Later I call some of the British companies that we visited to see how useful they found the visit. First, I try the exhibitors at the environmental trade fair in Hungary. "Well, he was well briefed," said one. "But did it do us any good? That's an interesting question. Can I have a moment to think about it?" Another said: "We got a picture of him on our stand, which has gone in a trade magazine that went round Europe. Who knows whether it has helped?"

One of the guests at the ambassador's reception in Bratislava, John Barter from BAE Systems, is convinced of the visit's benefits: "The visit got more coverage here than the French foreign minister did. Most travelling ministers come en route to Prague. It really went down well that he came and spent the night in Slovakia. We haven't had the prime minister out here at all so it's been really important that the duke's here to prove that Britain takes its relationship with Slovakia seriously."

For sectors such as defence these visits are useful PR: "A key aim for me was to show that I was respected by the prince in front of the deputy Slovak foreign minister," says Barter. "I was one of the first people he talked to during the evening - and that shows the Slovak government that I'm supported fully by the embassy and that I have their confidence and trust."

I repeatedly try to speak to Provident Financial to find out how fondly they remember their encounter with a cantankerous duke, but no one gets back to me.

In the end, it is the utilitarian function rather than mystic attitude towards monarchy that is Prince Andrew's main strength. He unashamedly acknowledges that he's in the PR industry, is aware of the limits of his role, and carries out his duties with interest, sharpness and a complete absence of self-pity; a creature of routine who, though occasionally delighting in court-jester ebullience, is far from the "Duke of Yob" tabloid stereotype.

Thus, some of Prince Andrew's royal duties certainly seem to help British business some of the time. But would the annual £75,000 hotel bill and £320,000 flight costs be better spent on other forms of trade promotion? "The duke is kept going by the very, very positive feedback from the business community," Samantha tells me as I call to check a few facts. Fine, but if he's in the business of international PR, then he can't continue to be a PR disaster at home. The finest service the press office could give him would be to book him on easyJet and GNER more often and publicly to snap his golf clubs in half.