‘It was weird’: The stomach-churning truth of Prince Andrew’s teddy bear fetish

Peek behind the curtain at any member of the Royal Family and chances are you’ll find a deeply troubled individual. That’s perhaps most applicable to Queen Elizabeth’s third child Prince Andrew who will forever be persona non grata to the Windsors after the cataclysmically dreadful Jeffrey Epstein revelations surrounding him.

But today we’re not here to talk about what “Randy Andy” may or may not have gotten up to on Epstein’s “pedophile island” of Little St. James, though we are staying firmly within the royal bedroom. Nope, we’re here to talk about the innocent topic of stuffed toys and teddy bears — though don’t be surprised if you feel your skin crawling the more you read.

Prince Andrew’s passion for children’s toys isn’t a state secret. In 2010, he freely admitted that he was building a teddy bear army, saying: “I’ve always collected teddy bears. Everywhere I went in the Navy I used to buy a little teddy bear, so I’ve got a collection from all over the world of one sort or another.” Why, when you put it like that it almost sounds harmless, just a fun thing to keep tucked away in a cupboard as mementos of past trips!

Hah. Well, no, as it appears, Andrew seems to have used his teddy bear collection as a way to psychologically torture his staff. In the 2022 documentary Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile, his former aide Paul Page recounted that Andrew maintained an active collection of “about 50 or 60 stuffed toys” (the exact number is apparently 72) on his bed at all times.

These have to be placed in highly specific positions, warranting the production of a laminated card stored in Andrew’s bedside table that instructs maids on how to arrange them in the right order at the right time of day. For example, according to his former maid Charlotte Briggs, she was ordered to make “them look pretty,” including putting his two favorite bears in “bedside thrones” and ensuring he was surrounded by his collection as he went to sleep. Here’s an artist’s impression of how Andrew’s bears must look before bed:

And if Mr. Hippo is off-center? Or the teddy holding a heart was mixed up with the necklace-wearing bear? As per Page, he would throw an almighty foot-stomping tantrum: “if those bears weren’t put back in the right order by the maids, he would shout and scream.” Briggs backs this up, saying “Andrew was extremely demanding. Everything had to be immaculate and he threw his weight around. I often tried to hide.”

It’s also worth remembering that Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, had to put up with this when she was sharing a bed with him. In the book Fergie at the Palace, author Ingrid Seward was given a tour by Ferguson and came across the bear arrangement. She assumed they were hers: “‘Oh Fergie, you haven’t still got your old teddies have you?” Sarah responded: “No they are all Andrew’s,” a revelation that left both women giggling.

A reporter, Elizabeth Day, also encountered Andrew’s plushies in 2019 and sounds profoundly freaked out by it:

It seemed rather strange to me that a grown man should be so amused by the presence of a stuffed toy, but I suppose the English upper classes have a long history with teddy bears used as transitional objects to express emotions they might feel uncomfortable with. I wondered if this was someone who had never really grown up because he had never had to. Here he was, taking up space in his mother’s house, carrying out a made-up job to keep him entertained and still having a teddy bear his ex-wife had given him. It was weird.”

Journalist Helen Kirwan-Taylor perhaps had the best conclusion about all this, concluding that Andrew’s brain appears to be locked in an immature state, explaining the tantrums: “Prince Andrew would do better to play with his teddies than shout at staff: It might offer the mental relief he clearly needs.” Let’s face it, if this is all public knowledge, then the mind boggles at what must be still kept secret.