Prince Andrew celebrates his 65th birthday today with his reputation in tatters.

From his settlement with Virginia Giuffre to his association with an alleged Chinese spy and the ongoing scuffle between brothers over the Royal Lodge, Prince Andrew, 65, has little hope of worming his way back into the royal family fold, especially if Palace staff have anything to do with it.

During his time as a working royal, Andrew earned a reputation for being imperious, bad-tempered and rude towards his aides.

In the Amazon Prime series A Very Royal Scandal, Michael Sheen plays a pompous Andrew whose first scene sees him storming through the corridors of the palace, barking at a footman to ‘f*** off’.

And this seems to be an accurate portrayal of his temperament as an aide once told royal expert Tom Quinn in his book Gilded Youth that Andrew ‘was always curt to the staff and dismissive of them – he treated them as if we were living in the middle ages.’

But Andrew’s impatience also extends to his brother Charles. ‘I really think he looked down on Charles,’ the aide added. ‘And, as with so many younger royal princes, thought he would make a much better king than his eldest brother’.

In 2022, Andrew was accused of ‘overbearing’ and ‘verbally abusive behaviour’ towards Palace staff.

Former royal protection officer Paul Page has claimed he personally made three separate complaints to the Palace during the time he worked in the Royal Protection Command from 1998 until 2004. 

Speaking to The Sunday Mirror, Mr Page said that he is aware of ‘at least a dozen’ other reports made by colleagues about the Duke of York.

‘The Palace have a problem because there are instances and evidence of Prince Andrew being overbearing and verbally abusive,’ he told the newspaper.

Mr Page alleged his complaints during his time working for the Palace were ignored because senior courtiers wanted to avoid agitation, and called on officials to launch an investigation into the complaints in the same way they did with Meghan Markle.

‘Buckingham Palace launched a bullying investigation against Meghan after she was accused of wrongdoing,’ Mr Page, whose revelations in an ITV documentary sparked a string of complaints about the duke, said.

‘If it’s a fair organisation that looks after its staff, an investigation should be started to confirm whether or not Andrew is guilty of being a bully and of intimidating staff.’

Andrew’s explosive temper earned him a reputation among Palace staff, including Mr Page, for being a ‘bully’.

In one instance, the former security guard claimed he responded to a report of a ‘man walking the corridor in the Queen’s private quarters’ in the early 2000s.

Obviously alarmed, he went up to investigate only to find a ‘scruffy’ Prince Andrew wearing a tracksuit.

Mr Page explained to The Sun: ‘I apologised and said, “I’m sorry, your Highness, we went to investigate a possible intruder in Her Majesty’s apartments’ to which Andrew replied: “This is my house, I go where I want, now f*** off.”‘

The former protection officer also claimed Andrew had a bed with ’50 or 60′ stuffed toys and maids were given a laminated picture so each bear could carefully be put back in its original position.

A spokesperson for Andrew made no comment about Mr Page’s claims.

But ex-Buckingham Palace maid Charlotte Briggs confirmed to The Sun she was given one-day worth of training on how to correctly place Andrew’s teddy bears in size order.

She also told the publication that she was left ‘in tears’ after the ‘demanding’ and ‘foul-mouthed’ Andrew made her run up four flights of stairs to shut his curtains while he was sat next to them.

Other members of the household have said he made very little effort to be pleasant.

One said: ‘He was just dreadful — very happy to pick up the phone and shout at whoever answered it.’

‘He was not easy as an adviser to deal with,’ one senior courtier recalled. ‘He was very arrogant indeed. 

‘That arrogance could have stemmed from a lack of self-confidence. He is not at all bright.

‘The fact he lashed out and was very rude to advisers like me was down to a total lack of self-confidence, and [an awareness] that he could always run to his mother and say: “They are all being nasty to me.”

Andrew was also said to have launched into a torrent of foul language at the Queen’s press secretary over an umbrella for Her Majesty.

In his book Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind The Crown, Valentine Low told how he pointed in the face of James Roscoe, and said: ‘Who the f*** are you to ask these men to find you a f***ing umbrella? You go and find your own f***ing umbrella.’

Andrew’s impatience also extended to his older brother Charles, who he was intensely jealous of.

All three of the late Queen’s sons, Charles, Andrew and Edward, attended the elite boarding school Gordonstoun in Moray, Scotland – where fees now cost up to £20,000 per term.

Although Charles was bullied at the school and described his time there as a ‘prison sentence’, he did become head boy.

Andrew, on the other hand, did not, with the author of The Palace Papers Tina Brown theorising it was because ‘his classmates didn’t like him much’.

She wrote: ‘They found him big-headed, arrogant, and deluded about his own intelligence.’

Due to his love of telling crude jokes, at which he laughed excessively, his peers gave Andrew the nickname ‘the Snigerer’.

‘One senses that there was always a hollowness in Andrew’s personality,’ Brown added. ‘That’s why he laughed louder and boasted so much and tried to seem important.

‘By the time he went to Gordonstoun, he knew that for all the places he lived in and the servants that Sir’d him, he was the second son whose childhood parity with Charles was a mirage.’