Pizza Express held an internal inquiry into Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's claim that he took Princess Beatrice to its Woking restaurant on 10 March 2001, a detail he raised in his 2019 Newsnight interview. Newsnight later found the company could not prove he was there or rule it out.
The restaurant's review looked for records from that period and tried to speak with past staff and local management. The manager of the Woking branch in 2001 had left the business by the time the inquiry was carried out.
Newsnight interview claim
In the interview, Mountbatten Windsor said, "I'd taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking," and added, "This has all been worked out by my staff, who've looked at the diary and everything else." He also said, "The duchess [Sarah Ferguson] was away, I think, United States somewhere," before adding, "So if one of us was out, the other one was in."
He said the visit took place at "4pm or 5pm in the afternoon" on 10 March 2001, before he spent the night at home. A small amount of the interview was not broadcast because of time constraints, but the Pizza Express reference went on to draw wide attention.
Pizza Express in Woking
Pizza Express bosses held the inquiry in 2019 because they viewed the claim as a matter of public interest. Newsnight said the review found no evidence that Mountbatten Windsor had or had not been at the Woking restaurant, and its research found no record of anyone seeing him there that night.
The limits of that search matter here. A missing record from 2001 does not settle the claim, and the absence of staff who could speak to the night left the company with a gap rather than a yes-or-no answer. That is why the internal review became part of the public record at all: it tested a claim that had already become a talking point far beyond Surrey.
February arrest in Surrey
The current reporting returned to the interview after the Epstein files and Mountbatten Windsor's February arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office by Thames Valley Police. He was later released under investigation.
Virginia Giuffre said she was forced to have sex with Mountbatten Windsor three times, including when she was 17. She also said that on 10 March 2001 she dined with him, danced with him at a nightclub and later had sex with him at the house of Ghislaine Maxwell in Belgravia, central London.
Mountbatten Windsor did not respond to a request for comment. The Pizza Express claim still stands as a narrow factual test: a former prince said he was at a restaurant with his daughter, and the company later found no evidence to settle the point either way.
