Jayne Dowle: This wayward Prince must learn from his mother how to put the country first

HOW do we solve a problem like Prince Andrew? Her Majesty’s second son has gone his own way for years, attracting controversy with his partying and his unsuitable choice of bride in Sarah Ferguson.

His family might be Royal, but it has all the problems you find in any big brood. A middle child, absolved of the responsibility of the eldest, is often the most wayward.

And now we find that Prince Andrew has been associating with the kind of people he certainly wouldn’t want to bring home for tea with mother.

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Hanging out with Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, who is said to have tortured political opponents and rigged elections.

A close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a paedophile convicted of soliciting under-age girls for sex.

Then there are the reported links with a Libyan gun-runner and the family of the deposed Tunisian president. He has also met Saif Gaddafi – the son of the Libyan dictator – a couple of times.

Those creepy photographs of him leering at glamorous young women don’t exactly help enhance his standing, do they? He is 51, for goodness sake.

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Shouldn’t he have grown out of his Randy Andy reputation by now and be slipping quietly into dignified middle age? Doesn’t he have any normal mates, nice quiet chaps, lording it over a few thousand acres perhaps, and holding trenchant views on nothing more controversial than EU farming subsidies?

Of course, Prince Andrew has been given carte blanche to “forge links” with anybody he likes, under cover of his role as an official trade envoy for Britain. You can see how a man of his rumbustious nature might be led astray. All those drinks parties. All those business meetings conducted round the pool in some warm and balmy land.

You may, if you are reading this stuck on the train late for work, wonder exactly what it is that a Royal “trade envoy” does. It would seem that his role is to, basically, travel the world at taxpayers’ expense, talking to people.

It’s not the kind of position you see advertised in your local JobCentre Plus, is it? And it does of course, beg the question of whether the “spare to the heir” should be trusted to work at all.

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It is pretty clear that this role was created specifically to give him something to do. After his brief spell as a dashing helicopter pilot in his twenties, he hardly threw himself into anything else, except golf.

But the beleaguered Royal Family couldn’t afford the embarrassment of supporting him to do nothing much. Given these recent revelations though, it makes you wonder whether he would have been better off back at home with his mother. After all, his marriage to Sarah Ferguson ended in expensive humiliation.

She is still bleating about her bankruptcy, offering to sell access to her husband to drum up a few grand, and even accepting a donation of £15,000 from his paedophile pal to make a dent in her £5m debts.

Their daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, appear to be students / doing something connected to art / fashion. Who knows? Who cares? But they seem to spend more time falling out of nightclubs in short skirts than contributing anything much to society. Sorry to state the obvious, but if you look at the parents, then what else do you expect?

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So, yes, to answer the question, Prince Andrew should work. If only to set an example to his own princesses that modern Royals are required to do more than decorate the gossip columns. But maybe it is time for a late career change. After all, he’s not the only fiftysomething in Britain expected to force himself into a bit of re-training.

I have a suggestion. Instead of David Cameron wringing his hands over whether HRH should be ever be allowed out of the country on official business again, perhaps he should have a chat with the Queen and redeploy him closer to home?

On the evidence so far, Prince Andrew will talk to anybody. He appears to have a way of dealing with tricky individuals. And he doesn’t seem to mind where he goes, as long as it’s a trip out somewhere.

So why not give him a new job? If ever a scheme needed some help getting off the ground, it is this Government’s idea to launch business enterprise zones in some of our most deprived regions.

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I’m not saying that he gets the gig as a mere figure-head, only required to turn up to cut ribbons and have his picture taken. That would only underline his reputation for being a bit useless.

No, he would be much better served putting those years of brokering to good use, working behind the scenes to persuade some of the (legitimate) overseas business contacts he has made to invest in the areas of Britain which really need it.

I’m not saying Scunthorpe is going to be as glamorous as the Seychelles, but we’ve all got to make sacrifices. He should think of his mother, for once.

She’s put her country first and her own concerns last for almost 60 years. Her wayward second son has still – just – got the chance to make up for all that lost time.