Top News

Jeremy Vine was left flummoxed on his Channel 5 show when broadcaster Mike Parry insisted there is only one option left for Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. Vine opened the show to his guest in the studio during a debate on whether the pair should be banned from royal events after their father Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest - though he has always denied any wrongdoing - and mother Sarah Ferguson's leaked emails to Jeffrey Epstein.

Vine kicked off the segment by saying: "The princesses themselves are named hundreds of times in the Epstein files, although that is no suggestion of wrongdoing by them. There are a number of connections with Epstein that are what you might call tangential."

Parry responded: "I don't think they should be banned [from royal events], they should be advised to stay away. I mean, having a mother like Sarah Ferguson is not a good thing in life, in my view. She took those daughters of hers to meet Epstein three days after he was released from his first in-house jail sentence."

Clarifying, Vine said: "So they were 19 and 21 and you could say they were adults, they knew he'd been in jail for sex offences. Could you say they are partly responsible for having been at that lunch?"

Parry mused: "Well I think they wanted to be there with their mother, because that's part of their life. But nevertheless their mother had a huge influence on them throughout their life - their sense of entitlement, their sense of 'oh, look, I know loads of famous people, you're going to come with me'.

"I mean, her behaviour is almost as bad, in my view, as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's!"

Vine chimed in to say: "Sarah in a way is gone now, she's finished."

As Parry agreed: "She has gone, but I'm afraid those two daughters are indelibly stained by what's happened to their father and to their mother.

"Can you imagine if they go into Royal Ascot, the royal box, everyone will be pointing at them! Everyone will be going up and saying, 'How's your dad?' It's impossible. They should stay away."

Ensure our latest showbiz headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. **Click here to activate or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings.