Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis won huge plaudits for her tough line of questioning during her now infamous interview with Prince Andrew – but it seems there’s someone else who also deserves some credit.
The BBC journalist has admitted she channeled Line Of Duty’s DCI Kate Fleming as she grilled the royal on sex allegations and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein last year.
Speaking on Jessie Ware’s Table Manners podcast, Emily explained she wanted to use the “forensic” approach favoured by Vicky McClure’s character in the hit BBC drama.
She said: “I was channelling DCI Kate Fleming. There’s something so calmly forensic about the way she does it.
“It’s unemotional, calm, quiet, but you know she’s done her homework. That was what I wanted.
“I’d have shown myself up if I’d got dates wrong, names wrong, said something he’d had to contradict because I’d mixed things up.”
Prince Andrew’s association with Epstein had been widely scrutinised in the past, but returned to the fore after Epstein died whilst in custody in August.
The Duke of York had been pictured at the disgraced financiers home, and one of the 16 women who said they had been abused by Epstein, Virginia Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts), has previously claimed in court that she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17.
Prince Andrew has denied all allegations against him.
During the interview, the prince insisted he could not have been the sweaty man his accuser claimed he was, because he can’t sweat after “an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War, when [he] was shot at”.
Emily revealed his comments came after she opened up about her love of feeling a rush.
She explained: “I am quite adrenaline-driven. I am fascinated by adrenaline. Weirdly, that is what I said to him when he said, ‘I must tell you about why I don’t sweat because of the adrenaline’.
“I said, ‘I am fascinated about adrenaline’. Then he told me about the no sweating thing.
“I thought I hated it [adrenaline] and now I have had to recognise it is a part of what I do and what I need. I know I need my highs and know I have to expect my lows.
“So there are crashes but all that is done away from the cameras and away from the interview. I try not to bring that into work.”
The full interview appears on Jessie Ware’s Table Manners podcast, available to stream now.