Is that £12m in Andrew's pocket ...

... or is he just pleased to see a blonde woman half his age?

Oh, the grand old Duke of York, he borrowed 12 million quid. He gave it to someone he'd never met for something he never did. Thanks to Balderdashing through the sloe for that one.

Maybe the Telegraph's confidently reported figure of £12m is an overestimate -- we'll probably never know. But The Times reports that we should in due course find out how much he has paid to Virginia Giuffre's charity, which will give an indication of the full settlement.

Both papers say Andrew is borrowing money from Mummy to buy his way out of trouble -- and that the royal family is being urged to make clear that the public isn't paying.

What?

We give the family about £86m a year in the form of the sovereign grant. I don't think anyone will be surprised if it just happens to be a bit more in the next couple of years. Or a bit less: the grant is calculated as 25% of the Crown Estate's net income, after all, and I expect a good accountant might be able to work something out to help with Andrew's, er, expenses.

Does anyone really think all those castles and loot are the family's private property? We at DumbedUP are not rabid republicans by any means, despite the best efforts of the idiotic second sons, but when you think that the Queen owns, according to the excellent site Mental Floss, Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park, a lot of the British coastline and all of our sea bed, I think we can sensibly say that what's hers is ours. The crown's money versus the state's money is a false distinction.

So, yes, we are paying for those things Andrew didn't do to someone he's never met because he can't sweat and has fat fingers. Or is it thin fingers? At least he's finally realised -- or says he has -- that the Epstein years were far from the best chapter of an extremely wretched life.