Royal deal maker

• Last Updated: November 07. 2009 9:06PM UAE / November 7. 2009 5:06PM GMT

No longer the “playboy prince” beloved of the tabloids, Prince Andrew now travels the world supporting British business. On a recent visit to the UAE, he talked about his work, his life and the special connection he has with the region to Helena Frith Powell.

Prince Andrew means business. He is in the region on a five-nation tour that includes Egypt, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and a fifth destination his security staff would prefer we did not mention.

The British press would have us believe that the Prince, or “the Playboy Prince” as they refer to him, will be spending his time doing nothing but improving his already impressive golf handicap. A brief look at his itinerary tells a different story.

The day he is in Dubai, for example, starts at 10am with a visit to the British Council and ends at 7.30pm when he says a few words about the Olympics Countdown Clock. In between, he has no fewer than seven meetings. Between 12.50 and 1pm there is an “opportunity to retire” – in other words, 10 minutes off. Less than any normal working person. And unlike any normal working person, the prince doesn’t get paid for doing all this. So why does he do it?

“I was delighted with my time in the navy, but my motivation to take this on was very simple,” he says in an exclusive interview with M magazine at the Emirates Palace hotel. “If you take two identical people and one is a member of the royal family and the other is not, they can both conduct the same role in the navy just as effectively as each other. On the other hand, the person who is not a member of the royal family could not do what I do on behalf of British business as effectively.”

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was born Andrew Albert Christian Edward on February 19, 1960. He is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip and fourth in line to the throne. He is a well-built man with good poise, which I suppose is only natural for someone who probably had the Queen of England telling him to stand up straight when he was growing up.

The role he is referring to is one of Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, which he took on in 2001. He was asked by the British government to leave the navy to take on the new role after 22 years in service, including active service during the Falklands War.

The aim of the role is threefold: to promote the UK as an investment destination; to create more favourable business conditions for UK companies abroad; and to help UK companies export their products. Feedback from the companies he supports is positive. Sir John Rose, for example, the chief executive officer of the Rolls-Royce Group, says he values his involvement. “The duke has a real grasp of the importance and potential of engineering, helped enormously by the fact that he knows Rolls-Royce first-hand from his service in the Royal Navy as a pilot who flew Rolls-Royce-powered helicopters.”

The cost to UK taxpayers last year for the prince’s 600 or so engagements on behalf of British trade was about £600,000 (Dh3.6 million) in flights and other expenses. Will they get that back? One well-documented deal was the £2.5 billion (Dh15 billion) AirAsia contract for Airbus and Rolls-Royce engines. Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia, said the prince’s involvement convinced him to buy British.

The prince himself is not keen to give specific examples of success stories. “But I will say that the oil and gas industry in the UK is hugely dependent on relationships, and there have been a number of cases where companies have been assisted by the work of the special representative for trade, likewise for mining companies.”

Since 2005, his engagements have doubled, something of which he was unaware. He calls Ed Perkins, his press secretary, over. “Is this true?” “Yes, sir,” he replies.

“I am shocked to hear that. I just thought it was a slow and steady increase,” says the prince. Can he explain why there has been such a dramatic increase?

He leans forward in his chair. “In the military, when someone asks you to do something, you go away and you execute that task. Having been asked to take on this role I have gone on to execute it in the same disciplined and responsible fashion I conducted my aviation career.”

Discipline, responsibility and duty are words he often uses. In his 20s he was nicknamed “randy Andy” by the British media. There is a definite twinkle in his eye, but he is more serious than that image portrayed. His time in the navy obviously affected him, though he says that his sense of duty has always been with him and comes from the family. “I always assumed I was going to be in some sort of service to the UK.”

Prince Andrew was the first child born to a reigning British monarch since Queen Victoria’s youngest child, Queen Beatrice, in 1857. He was called His Royal Highness from birth. His childhood must have been rather different from others. What is being a prince actually like?

“I will answer that by saying that you have an experience of your childhood, which is unique to yourself. I can’t imagine your childhood and the way you were brought up in the same way that it is difficult for people to imagine my childhood and the way I was brought up. But I’ll tell you this,” he says with great emphasis, leaning forward again, “the dissimilarities are far less than you would imagine.” He leans back and laughs. “It’s exactly the same, the only difference is that the building it happened in is a little bit bigger, that’s all. Anyway, any notion of being different was wiped away with over 20 years in the navy, where I was treated just the same way as everyone else. As for being a prince, well, what is it like being anyone?”

Prince Andrew has a relaxed manner and laughs easily. He is far more charming and engaging than one might expect. His staff, who call him sir, are clearly fond of him and loyal. There is a sense of mission but also a sense of fun within the team. Throughout the interview, there are quips back and forth.

The fact that he has managed to maintain such excellent relations with his former wife, Sarah, is further evidence the Duke of York is a man with whom people get on well.

He explains that he and his ex-wife decided early on to do what was best for their two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, which was to remain friends, and that there was no real reason not to. “It made no difference to us what the reason for our divorce was, and there was no real reason to fall out. We both recognised that these two girls are our pride and joy and that we would do whatever we could, individually or as a couple, to give them the best education we could and to provide them with the stability they needed.”

Does he think their childhood differed from his own? “It was definitely less formal,” he says. “We have tried to give them that balance of what is required and what is desired: tried to teach them how the family works, how the whole organisation works, how to know when they are on parade and also to remind them that there are occasions when they will find themselves in difficult positions, and how to get out of them. What is desired is to give them enough freedom and flexibility to be the wonderful people they are.” He smiles proudly. “The sky’s the limit for those two.”

I ask him if he sometimes wishes there wasn’t quite so much of “what is required”, as he calls it. “There are certain structures, certain restrictions that I sometimes think about. There are things you can do that, to me, seem absolutely wonderful, like the ability to be anonymous in a crowd and walk about. You can’t be if you’re one of us. I am only ever alone at night; there are always security people about, always someone there. But that’s just the way it’s always been. I’ve just got used to it over the years.”

And if he weren’t Prince Andrew, what would he be? He laughs uproariously. “I haven’t a clue. I have never given it any consideration, the reason being it’s just not going to happen, however much you might wish it. And I can’t wish it. I am who I am by accident of birth, just like you are who you are by accident of birth.”

In February next year, Prince Andrew will be 50. How does he feel about that? “It’s just business as usual,” he shrugs. “Just another date in the calendar.” He smiles. “But I am led to believe that 50 is the new 30.”

He doesn’t think of himself in the context of past royals and the history that precedes him. “The point about the royal family and the monarchy is that they do not think about legacy because they are only interested in continuing and making sure that the next generation has the ability to be able to carry on their duty and responsibility,” he says.

He cannot envisage an end to the monarchy, as many did when Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997, when anti-royal sentiment was at a high point. Does he feel she was good or bad for the monarchy? “I actually think the Princess of Wales contributed a huge amount not just to the UK but the global community. It was a terrible and tragic shock when she was killed in a car crash. She would have gone on to contribute a lot more, I think.”

Many blame her death on the press. Prince Andrew has not had a good relationship with the media, either, at least not with the British tabloid press. Most recently, they took a remark he made about bankers’ bonuses being minute in the grand scheme of things and pilloried him for defending greedy bankers. Shortly after he started in his role as Special Representative for Trade and Industry he was nicknamed “Air-miles Andy”.

He sighs. “I think certain tabloid newspapers think that their readers assume that going around the world is fun. Well, it can be fun, but it’s extremely hard work, too.

“Much will be made of the fact that I attended the Grand Prix here, but the fact is that I try to come to this region twice a year, and a year ago Sheikh Mohammed asked me to schedule one of my visits to coincide with the Grand Prix weekend.

“And that will be work in a sense, too, because there are people to talk to there not only from the region but from a much wider area.

“If you are in the public domain then you cannot prevent people from throwing stones. One grows up with a slightly thicker skin, I suspect, in our business. But there is value in what we do.”

The prince has served his country on the front line of a war zone as well as on the business front. He once said he left for the Falklands a boy and came back a man.

“You’re trained and I have to say that the navy still to this day delivers probably the best military programme that I can think of. We were well prepared for the action that was about to be undertaken, but at same time you had to go through that process of understanding your fears, your anxieties, your concerns and you had to think about them.” He pauses. “There is a strange moment if you’re in combat operations where there comes a point when you think you’re invincible. You almost feel untouchable.”

He didn’t give his nephew Prince Harry any advice before his deployment to Afghanistan (he served for 10 weeks in Helmand province before news of his presence in the country was leaked and he was withdrawn due to worries that he might become a Taliban target), and he was not worried about him.

He also feels that the campaign in Afghanistan is worthwhile and that not fighting it would have repercussions for many countries, not just the UK.

“I think Afghanistan is a worthwhile campaign to be involved in because I believe that it has a direct threat not only to our country through the destabilising effect of giving somebody an ability to use a place from which to operate terrorism. It affects this country [the UAE] in a similar fashion, probably even more directly than it does us, and so I think it is right.

“But I kept thinking last week when I was at Al Alamein to remember those who died there: here in the 1940s were soldiers fighting in an unknown country under some pretty horrendous conditions. Some of them really didn’t know what they were doing and why they were doing it, and you’ve got people in Afghanistan today fighting in a country they don’t know, in some very hostile conditions, doing an absolutely outstanding job.

“I think that despite the politics – because the politics is something completely different, and not part of my remit – we’ve got troops there and we should be supporting the activity of the troops there. We must think very, very carefully about the consequences of not being involved.”

The Duke of York has been coming to the Middle East for many years. He brought his daughter Beatrice on one of his trips to the region during her year off between school and university. “She loved it.” He is extremely fond of the region and a friend of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

“The UAE was one of the first countries I visited when I started this role,” he says. “You have over 100,000 UK residents here. I wanted to know why the British community was so large. Clearly it is because of the business opportunities that are here.”

Prince Andrew now lives in the Royal Lodge at Windsor, the former home of the Queen Mother. What is the first thing he does when he returns there after a trip abroad?

“The first thing I do is try to get out of the car without being mauled or jumped on by my four dogs. They know perfectly well when I am going away and skulk and make me feel really guilty. When I come back they make a bit of a fuss.”

Another favourite pastime when he is at home is practising his short game on his artificial green. “When you have a handicap of four it is very hard to maintain, especially if you don’t get to play very often. So to keep my hand in I had an artificial green built where I go even for 10 or 15 minutes because if that part of your game works you can normally play pretty much to par.”

At the moment he is reading William Shawcross’s new biography about his grandmother. But he hasn’t got very far. “It’s over 1,000 pages. I think I am going to have to save it for what I call a very rainy day.” He laughs. “I also picked up another book about MI5 which I thought looked interesting, but I’ve just worked out it’s got even more pages than the book about the Queen Mother.

“But on the rare occasions when I have time to read I prefer to be unchallenged. I like things like dramatised historical novels, medieval warfare and things that are sufficiently different to take one’s mind away from reality for a little bit.

“I have a lot of reading with the role in terms of briefs and trying to get my mind around the issues that may assault me, so every now and again getting away from it is rather nice.”

Would he ever consider retiring? Finally having time to read that book about his grandmother? Or maybe spending more time on the golf course?

According to his press secretary, who has been travelling with him for two years, the duke has never once played golf on a trip. “Gosh, is it two years you’ve been with us?” he asks him.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” he replies.

“Feels like longer doesn’t it?” quips the Prince’s personal secretary.

Prince Andrew laughs and then returns to the question. “Members of the royal family don’t retire,” he says, standing up to say goodbye before he jumps in a helicopter and heads off to his next meeting. “For two reasons: one, you can’t anyway, and two, I don’t have a pension.”