Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis has looked back on her infamous interview with Prince Andrew last year, admitting that she was "incredibly nervous" at the prospect of interviewing the Queen's son.
In a special edition of the programme, Maitlis sat down for a no-holds-barred chat with the senior Royal to talk about his relationship with the paedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and accusations that he had had sexual relations with a girl trafficked by the disgraced financier.
The 45-minute programme was widely regarded as a car crash and led to Andrew stepping back from the majority of his duties as a member of the Royal Family.
Maitlis, meanwhile, was lauded for her effective questioning of the prince in an interview that was arranged clandestinely with programme editor Esme Wren.
"I was incredibly nervous," she told the Radio Times. "How could I not be? I remember Esme saying, 'This interview has to be a document that people can return to in the future. It might be the only chance we get to set the record straight.'
"So we kept it very close to our chests until it was done. The fear was that the more people who knew, the more likely it was that something would go wrong.
"I think their shock was not at the interview itself, but the reaction it caused in the days and weeks afterwards. Now, eight months on, it may feel like 'a moment of television', but we should never forgot the people at the centre of this whole story - Epstein's accusers and what they'd been through and were, in some cases, still fighting.
"It was never meant to be a badge of honour - it was meant to be a chance to get to the heart of a story that had confused many people for so long."
Relive the interview in full below:
Neil Wilkes
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