A former royal live-in aide claims that Prince Andrew once responded to a saucy slogan on the T-shirt she was wearing by making a lunge for her, prompting her to make a quick getaway.
Nicola Palmer, who was 21 when she was a PA living at the Duke of York’s former residence, Sunninghill Park in Berkshire, was cited by The Sun as saying: “He looked at my chest. I remember him staring, grinning. I turned and ran upstairs.”
Palmer who quit her job as the Duchess of York’s live-in PA after only four months, said the incident took place when she was off duty, but helping the nanny of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie – the daughters of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York.
Both Prince Andrew and his ex-wife - whom he divorced in 1996 but was continuing to live with - were out of the house but at some point the Queen’s second son came home early.
“I got Beatrice’s face-pack on my T-shirt, so I rushed to my accommodation to get another, flung it on without even looking at it, and rushed back,” said Palmer, who claimed her French Connection (branded as FCUK) shirt had the words “think my pants off’ printed across it.
Palmer then described hearing a noise and seeing the Duke in the corridor. He then reportedly peered at her chest and asked “to explain”.
“I looked at him and said nothing. But then he said, ‘Well, go on.’ It was very strange … The next thing, I was fumbling my words and I said, ‘You have to think of me with my pants off’,” she said.
According to her account, that appeared to trigger the Duke of York to “lunge towards” her. “I turned to my left and ran upstairs to the attic. I screamed for a split second. I was alarmed. But when I reached the top I turned around, and he was gone.”
According to Palmer, she confided in another member of staff but was too ashamed to make a formal complaint, fearing she may have unintentionally “provoked” Prince Andrew. When pressed on whether she at any point believed he had been acting seriously, the woman claimed she could not give a definitive answer.
‘Had a Bad Feeling’
Looking back, Palmer said that once she took up her position in the household, it had been obvious that Prince Andrew was “unpopular” with staff.
Just weeks after her arrival, she claimed she was made to feel “uncomfortable” when she had to straddle a quadbike in a skirt. According to her, she had been using the vehicle to exercise the family dogs after work, but it broke down.
When Prince Andrew came upon her in a lane, he purportedly “fixed the bike”, and told her to get on. Then he added: “With all due respect, should you be wearing a skirt while on a quad bike?” Palmer was cited as saying that she had quipped: “With all due respect, should you be standing there while I get on the quadbike in a skirt?” To which he replied briefly, “Yes.”
“I had to hike my skirt up between my legs as he stood there. I felt confident he couldn’t see anything, but I felt intimidated because he was so close. I felt that he knew what he was doing… It was weird, and I felt very intimidated,” the woman was quoted as saying.
Nicola Palmer, from Loughton, Essex, also revealed to the newspaper that although she felt privileged to be working with the royals, she “had a very bad feeling about him, like a sixth sense. But I just got on with things.”
She claimed to have been privy to some odd behaviour from the ninth in line to the British throne.
“There were always cars being delivered, and one time he got a blue Range Rover. Andrew lost his s*** because he was expecting it to be green,” said Palmer.
Another time the prince is described as entering the larder, where the freezers were kept, opening them up and “whacking the ice with a chisel”. She resigned three months later, having decided that the position “wasn’t for me”.
"I’m now very glad I followed my instinct and got out,” concluded Nicola Palmer, who added that she had put her alleged experience in that particular household behind her until Prince Andrew made the headlines.
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Last month it was announced that the beleaguered royal had reached an undisclosed multi-million-pound out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that he assaulted her three times when she was 17. The prince has repeatedly denied the claims.
“I find that often women don’t stand by women, and I think we should be united a bit more. Perhaps telling my story will help someone else, as they helped me,” she said.