Prince Andrew: The Musical? If this is Channel 4’s way of giving the Tories the finger, I’m all for it

As a long-term admirer of Channel 4, I’ve always appreciated the broadcaster’s boldness and willingness to experiment and challenge the establishment.

Obviously not Countdown so much, or the Great British (Boring) Bake Off; but programmes such as The Bandung File – presented by former revolutionary socialist Tariq Ali. This focused on issues in the developing world and concluded its run with a profile of Egyptian novelist and poet Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab ever to win the Novel Prize for literature.

Or, take Brookside, which not only featured the first lesbian kiss on British TV, but also the first mainstream miserable Scouser: Harry Cross played with a magnetic misanthropic lugubriousness by Bill Dean, who rightly smashed the Carla Laine archetype of the chirpy Liverpudlian for good.

Even Naked Attraction – with all its flaccid dangly bits and saggy glands – was in its way an exploration of the true nature of human love. Come to think of it, so to speak, I also seem to remember that Channel 4 also televised the first live sexual intercourse and associated orgasms on British TV. It never ceases to amaze me that it was Margaret Thatcher who gave Channel 4 the green light back in 1982. Perhaps she thought it was a new brand of perfume.

Channel 4 News, contrary to Tory propaganda, has always gone out of its way to try to be balanced. The fact that it rarely has any Conservative politicians on is because they refuse to appear, thus cynically creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of bias. Here, then, is a channel that “delivers” (to borrow the current fashionable political cliche).

I’m therefore much intrigued by Channel 4’s forthcoming “satirical musical” about Prince Andrew, part of their “Truth and Dare” season. I’m wondering exactly how they’re going to deal with the more sensitive aspects of the Duke of York’s life, the ones that almost saw him in court in New York and embroiled in the worst scandal of its kind to besmirch the British monarchy (probably).

Even the most daring producers and skilled writers and composers would find it difficult – indeed, I’d argue, impossible – to portray the allegations of child sexual exploitation associated with Andrew’s friends Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a morally and legally acceptable way. I suppose that you can be funny about anything, strictly speaking, and you could certainly script a film or a musical about writing an appalling musical (as Mel Brooks did in The Producers and “Springtime for Hitler”), but I don’t think this is what the Channel 4 lot are up to.

Obviously, a figure as vainglorious and foolish as Andrew is ripe for ridicule, but he made such a good job of it himself during the famous Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis that I can’t see how that can be bettered for sheer slack-jawed entertainment value. As Mark Kermode would say, here’s a clip to refresh your memory of the debacle – in this scene, Maitlis has just put to HRH that he not only met and knew the young Victoria Roberts but he took her to a nightclub.

Prince Andrew: “Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do, a very unusual thing for me to do. I’ve never been… I’ve only been to Woking a couple of times and I remember it weirdly distinctly. As soon as somebody reminded me of it, I went, ‘Oh yes, I remember that.’ But I have no recollection of ever meeting or being in the company or the presence.”

Emily Maitlis: “So you’re absolutely sure that you were at home on the 10th March?”

Prince Andrew: “Yeah.”

Emily Maitlis: “She was very specific about that night, she described dancing with you.”

Prince Andrew: “No.”

Emily Maitlis: “And you profusely sweating and that she went on to have a bath, possibly.”

Prince Andrew: “There’s a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was… was it… yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenalin in the Falklands War when I was shot at and I simply… it was almost impossible for me to sweat. And it’s only because I have done a number of things in the recent past that I am starting to be able to do that again. So I’m afraid to say that there’s a medical condition that says that I didn’t do it so therefore…”

To which I say: Come on, Channel 4. How can you improve on that?

Prince Andrew’s exquisite, shifty, self-destructive deadpan delivery doesn’t need setting to music or getting the full Andrew Lloyd Webber treatment (and, by the way, no one at the pizzeria in Woking at the time who witnessed the usual sight of the Queen’s second son with his daughters ordering his double pepperoni with dough balls has yet come forward to confirm his attendance. Funny, that).

The same goes for his insouciance about a “perfectly straightforward” shooting party.

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There’s no doubt the disgraced Duke of York is a tremendous source of curiosity and embarrassment to the world, and we can’t get enough of him, perversely. Maybe, given his fame and notoriety and his desperation to be be rehabilitated we should make him the British entry in the next Eurovision Song Contest or offer him a presenter’s job on GB News (except he’d never agree to sink that low).

Apparently, there’s a movie of the epochal Maitlis interview being made, possibly with Hugh Grant in the royal role. It’s bound to be a huge hit, much like Frost/Nixon, but again (and like David Frost’s post-Watergate encounter with Richard Nixon) I just can’t see how fiction can improve on the original version.

Prince Andrew: The Musical may just be Channel 4’s way of telling Nadine Dorries and the Tories that they can “sod off”. In its 40th year and facing the uncertainties of a needless and vindictive privatisation, the programme makers are just giving the Department of Media, Culture and Sport the finger with a lavish display of bad taste. If they’re going to be taken off the air they may as well go out in style, I suppose, a blaze of glory.

They have, without any apparent sense of self-preservation, not only commissioned a controversial musical, but recruited that famously safe pair of hands Frankie Boyle to front a show – with Jimmy Carr presenting “an arts event like no other”, I bet.

I’m only disappointed they that they forgot to ask Jerry Sadowitz and his novelty escape artist genitalia along for the gala opening in front of the Queen, Princess Anne and indeed Prince Andrew. After all, Channel 4 is supposed to “show the unseen”, though in Sadowitz’s case that’s not strictly correct. I’ll sure miss Channel 4 when it’s gone.