King Charles ‘refuses to pay enormous sum for Andrew’s Indian healing guru’
King Charles has handed a fresh snub to Prince Andrew by refusing to shell out £32,000-a-year to pay for his brother’s Indian healing guru, reports say.
The disgraced Prince reportedly submitted the expense claim to the Privy Purse, expecting it to be signed off without any challenge.
But the King is said to have denied his request, and instead told Andrew he will have to pay for the live-in yoga instructor out of his own pocket.
The Duke of York has been using the yoga teacher for several years, the Sun reports.
The guru comes to live with Andrew in the Royal Lodge for a month at a time, and helps ‘heal’ the Prince using chanting, massages and holistic therapy, the paper reports.
The late Queen used to sign off on the expense every year, and was said to be happy to indulge her son’s lifestyle.
But since becoming King, Charles is looking to be much more thrifty about spending the Palace’s £24,000,000 annual income, which he believes reflects poorly on the royals in an age of austerity.
A source told the Sun: ‘While the Queen was always happy to indulge her son over the years, Charles is far less inclined to fund such indulgences particularly in an era of a cost-of-living crisis.
‘Families are struggling and would rightly baulk at the idea of tens of thousands paid to an Indian guru to provide holistic treatment to a non-working royal living in his grace and favour mansion.
‘This time the King saw the bill for the healer submitted by Andrew to the Privy Purse and thought his brother was having a laugh.’
The news comes days after reports that Andrew could be banned from wearing ceremonial robes to the King’s coronation on May 6.
The Duke of York is said to be furious about being kept ‘in the dark’ over whether he’ll be allowed to wear flowing velvet robes decorated with glistening insignia which denotes his position as a ‘Knight of the Garter’.
Andrew was stripped of his royal titles by the Queen last year following sex abuse claims made by Virginia Guiffre when she was 17 and revelations about his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein.
The move saw him banned from wearing his military uniform at the Queen’s funeral, and means he can no longer be called ‘His Royal Highness’- a symbol of his status as a senior royal.
He has also lost access to taxpayer-funded security and is set to have his £249,000-a-year grant slashed by Charles next month.
In January, reports claimed the Duke of York had been banned from using his suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace and would never return.
Plans are now in place to evict him from his £30,000,000 mansion at the Royal Lodge, with the palace reportedly drawing up a range of options to rehome him.
The Mirror reports that the monarch ‘will tempt the Duke of York with houses across the royal portfolio’ following his potential eviction from Royal Lodge.
A royal source told the newspaper: ‘The King and the Duke (of York) have vastly different ideas of where he (Andrew) should base himself both geographically as well as his involvement in family affairs.’
But Andrew is not prepared to go down without fighting, with sources reporting he may now give another historic tell-all interview in yet another effort to clear his name.
A source close to Prince Andrew told the Mirror: ‘Nothing is off the table.
‘Andrew has been made to give up his job and now potentially his home.’
The source added that he feels there is ‘little to lose’ and that the Prince believes he has already ‘paid an awfully high price’.
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