Pizza Express held an internal inquiry into claims made by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor that he visited the franchise’s Woking branch in 2001, a claim he made to defend himself against accusations from Virginia Giuffre.
Giuffre claimed she was forced to have sex with the former Duke of York three times, one of which was at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home on March 10, 2001, after sharing a meal and dancing at a nightclub.
However, the then-prince refuted the allegations, instead claiming in his infamous BBC Newsnight interview in 2019 that he had been attending a children’s birthday party with his daughter, Princess Beatrice, at the popular food chain at “4pm or 5pm in the afternoon”, before spending the rest of the evening at home.
“I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking,” he said in the interview, adding: “This has all been worked out by my staff, who’ve looked at the diary and everything else.”
He added that his wife, Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, was away at the time in the “United States somewhere” and that the couple had a simple rule when it came to looking after their kids: “If one of us was out, the other one was in.”
“On this particular occasion, she was away and I was at home,” he revealed, justifying his reason for attending the birthday party with his eldest daughter.
Now, the 66-year-old’s longtime reported “alibi” has been shrouded in doubt, with Pizza Express confirming that senior management investigated the claims as they believed it was a matter of public interest, BBC Newsnight reports.
The outlet adds they found no evidence that the royal did or did not visit the Woking location.
The BBC revealed that, following their own research, they found no record of anyone seeing the royal at the Woking Pizza Express on the night of March 10, 2001.
Earlier this year, Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office on his 66th birthday and was held at the Thames Valley Police for around 12 hours.
The former Duke was mentioned multiple times in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Files, and his links to the convicted paedophile have seen him lose his princely status, honorary military ranks and title as Duke of York, as well as his longtime Windsor home, Royal Lodge, which he was evicted from in February.
Giuffre passed away by suicide in April 2025 at the age of 41.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor continues to deny any wrongdoing.