Channel 5 viewers issue complaint minutes into Prince Andrew documentary: 'What a waste'

Channel 5 viewers have issued one big complaint minutes into the new Prince Andrew documentary exploring his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. On Monday (October 13), the broadcaster aired its exclusive 90-minute documentary titled Prince Andrew & the Epstein Email Scandal. The TV special uncovers a new leaked email from the disgraced royal in which he told Epstein, "we are in this together," after a snap of Andrew with his arm around a teenage Virginia Giuffre was first published in 2011.

It didn't take long before viewers flocked to X - formerly known as Twitter - to share their frustrations online, with many arguing that the TV special didn't need to be 90 minutes long. One user penned: "That Channel 5 is devoting 1.5 hours to the Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson email scandals is astounding; it is yet another nail in their coffins."

Another agreed: "I don't think I need to waste 90 minutes on a Prince Andrew documentary to work out whether or not he's a wrong'un." A third chimed in with: "Ok. I'm out. Nothing new to see here" as a fourth asked: "Does this really warrant 90 min airtime?"

The email adds further fuel to the flams surrounding the pressure on the Duke of York and the royal family after he previously told the BBC he had ceased contact with the child sex offender by that point. Correspondence between the King's younger brother and Epstein, published in the Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday, appears to show that was not the case.

Andrew emailed Epstein on February 28, 2011 - one day after the well-known photograph of the duke, Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell was made public. He told Epstein to "keep in close touch" and expressed a wish to "play some more soon".

In 2019, Andrew told the BBC's Newsnight programme that he broke off his friendship with Epstein in December 2010, after the two men were photographed together walking through New York. But he wrote to Epstein in the message after the photo was published: "I'm just as concerned for you!

"Don't worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise, keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!!!!" He is said to have signed off with: "A, HRH, The Duke of York, KG."

But Prince Andrew isn't the only one who was in contact with the convicted pedophile. The Duchess of York sent an email to Epstein in 2011 after she called him her "supreme friend" and seemed to apologise for her public criticism of him.

The Mail on Sunday and The Sun published a 2011 email from the duchess to Epstein, which appears to have been sent after she had publicly claimed to have broken off contact with him. In the email, she appeared to privately apologise for her public rejection, saying: "You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family."

This seemed to contradict her public denunciation of Epstein in an interview weeks earlier, in which she said she had said her involvement with him, including borrowing money, had been a "gigantic error in judgment" and that: "What he did was wrong and for which he was rightly jailed."