Prince William and Kate to ‘spread their wings’ in 2024

Now we've spoken a lot this year about the slimmed down royal family and how few working royals there are left with a greater workload. Now we understand the King had encouraged William and Kate to take a greater role. However, this week there was this odd report about this causing issue and potential jealousy from the King. Is this the case or is this just muckraking? Well, it's interesting, you know, when these topics come up about the sort of jealousy within the royal household, is there sort of a positioning for getting the best roles? That was certainly sort of Harry and Meghan's undoing, wasn't it? They were trying to work on issues and causes that members of the royal family had almost sort of sidelined for themselves. Now, I think that it's much more of a team effort in this, in this day and age, because there's not, there's not a lot of them. We saw Princess Anne recently in an interview saying, you know, there's not, there's not many of us left because of the slimmed down monarchy. I mean, that's seven out of the 11 working royals are over the age of 70. But what does it mean for William and Kate? Certainly, I think that we would have expected to see more from William and Kate, whether that was international travel, foreign tours. We haven't seen them on a foreign tour since this March of 2022. And I think they were kind of restricted in what the King was doing. And as we come to the end of this transitional year, we've seen the king come out of his shell, really. We've seen the trips to Germany and France go off fantastically well. But let's see. 2024 is going to be a big year for the royals. I think that William and Kate will have an awful lot more to do. Maybe they'll find, try and find their groove. We've seen them on a few more engagements recently. So maybe not so much jealousy, but maybe trying to, to try and spread their wings a little bit, I think. I think that's a much better way to look at it. Now, occasionally we do raise Prince Andrew, although he's not in the media too much. There always just seems a bit of news and a bit of long running saga about his living arrangements. What's the update? Well, you're right. I mean, a man who is sort of persona non grata, sort of put out to exile. But he is always at the front and centre of royal business behind the scenes. And that is because he's still jostling for position. Can you believe it? I mean, he was sort of put out to pasture owing to his disgraceful BBC Newsnight interview, the relationship exposed with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And so despite saying that he'd done nothing wrong and paying Virginia Dufresne about $15 million to not have a court case come to fruition, he's still trying to sort of try and find a role for himself within the royal family. And that includes where he's going to live. Now, the king, if you remember, said that he didn't necessarily want him to live in Royal Lodge anymore. It's a 30 bedroom, 30 room mansion on the royal estate. He can ill afford to keep a roof over his head there. Whether William and Kate will end up living there is another story. However, I found out this week that he's sort of been given a stay of execution by the king. The king has said, listen, you can stay there if you can afford the bills. Now, about $3 million are needed of renovations at the property. Who knows whether he will be able to afford that? Apparently, Fergie is going to lend him some of the money from her book deals. But as you said, this is a saga that is going to keep running and running and running. Whether the king does eventually get to evict him remains to be seen. But it's something that, you know, Andrew, as Andrew being Andrew, I think, putting himself front and centre once more. Now, one last thing I want to talk to you about is royal correspondent Nicholas Whitchell is retiring. Understand him and the king aren't on the greatest of terms. Now, I know as a journalist, you're not meant to make yourself the story, but you are a royal editor. How hard is it for you to walk that line between reporting objectively on the royals and maintaining enough of a relationship with the palace? Well, listen, first and foremost, Nicholas Whitchell, I've worked with him for a few years now and always been a great source of inspiration. He'd been doing the job for 47 years. He's decided to retire age 70. Of course, he became infamous throughout the land. In 2005, he was referred to as that awful man, can't stand him. The then Prince of Wales said when he was doing a photo call with his two boys. And I think that obviously something that Nick had said or done had irked the king at that date. I think there was a bit of an issue about the children being photographed the day before. However, he's always been a consummate professional. It's someone I've looked up to. And as you say, walking the line of doing your job properly, reporting on the royal family while still maintaining a relationship is something that we have to contend with. It's something that, you know, the political journos, the crime journos all have to contend with. But it's been a privilege of my career to work with Nick as well. And I think we all wish him well on his retirement. Absolutely love it. Russell Myers, thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much. My pleasure.