It’s not a good time to be an ‘Andrew’ but there’s always national pride to fall back on

The radio team meets every morning to plot out the day’s news shows, discuss what topics should be covered and which wise guests to book. On Thursday, as they were all huddled together, one of the production team apparently exclaimed, “Andrew’s been arrested!” My informant tells me that the room immediately divided into three camps: those who correctly deduced that the former Duke had been taken into custody; those who thought that Andrew Mueller, our esteemed host of The Foreign Desk had been chucked into the back of a carabinieri van (he’s in Milan as part of our Winter Olympics team – as in radio team, not pirouetting on the ice in a Monocle “M” emblazoned leotard); or, unbelievably, that yours truly had had his collar felt by the local constabulary. Perhaps it was the latter third who were responsible for what sounded like a little cheer emanating from the meeting room just past 10.00. When relaying these events to me, my informant, our senior news editor Chris Cermak, made it very clear that at no point did he believe that I had been hauled away. I think I believe him.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing regarding Jeffrey Epstein or in the way that he carried out his duties as a trade envoy, yet his fall from grace – having to renounce his titles, move to the rear end of windy Norfolk – has been dramatic. And his troubles have done little to embellish the desirability of the name “Andrew”. Its popularity peaked long ago but it is now on the endangered list in Britain. The latest turn of events will likely send “Andrew” the way of the dodo. Perhaps it’s time for all of the Andrews who remain to consider a modest rebrand. Could I pull off “Drew Tuck”? Perhaps our gruff-voiced Andrew Mueller could just be known as the “The Mueller Meister”. I’ll have a word with him.

One of the reasons that I’ve been having Cermakian chats this week is that he’s kindly booked me as a guest on The Briefing a couple of times. One of these was on Wednesday, when I headed into the studio to talk with Chris about a report from the Pew Research Center looking at what makes people feel proud of their country, based on a survey of 33,486 people in 25 countries (ie, it’s legit).

One of the reasons Chris, an Austro-American, had requested my presence was to quiz me on the UK’s woeful results, where 29 per cent of respondents said that they were not proud of their country, while 25 per cent said that they were. Nigeria came in second place on the negativity index, while in Indonesia just 2 per cent of people had a downer on national pride. And in the individual categories it wasn’t much better. Some 38 per cent of Italians were proud of their arts and culture, in contrast to 8 per cent of Brits (what about Mr Bean?). When it came to history, 37 per cent of Greeks were proud, 12 per cent of Britons and a meagre 3 per cent of Americans.

The truth is that the UK would never score highly in such a survey but if you asked Scots about Scotland and the Welsh about Wales, I am sure that the numbers would be more robust. Plus, our politicians have muddied the waters. The right believes that you have lost your marbles if you like the country (to be referred to at all times as “Broken Britain”) today, while the left always gets queasy near a Union Jack, fearing that you are about to bring back the empire. National pride is not a badge that the British wear well. We like being miserable contrarians.

But it will be interesting to see whether the royal family’s latest bout of difficult news headlines further damages how proud people feel of being British. Will the tarnishing of a supposed soft-power asset dim the nation’s mood? Maybe. But perhaps a forced reboot of the monarchy and what it represents, as well as a demonstration that in Britain nobody is above the law, will do us the power of good and make us look at our institutions and the rule of law with something close to pride.

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