Pizza Express held an internal inquiry in 2019 into whether Andrew Mountbatten Windsor had visited its Woking restaurant, BBC Newsnight has learnt. The former prince said in his 2019 Newsnight interview that he took his daughter Princess Beatrice to the Woking branch at "4pm or 5pm in the afternoon" on 10 March 2001, the date Virginia Giuffre alleges one of her encounters with him occurred. Pizza Express senior managers searched records from that period, tried to contact former local staff and the 2001 branch manager, and concluded they had found no evidence either to confirm or to disprove his claim. Newsnight’s additional inquiries found no record of any customer or staff member seeing him at the restaurant that night. Mountbatten Windsor did not respond to a request for comment to Newsnight and has strenuously denied wrongdoing. Newsnight revisited the interview in the context of the Epstein files and Mountbatten Windsor’s February arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office by Thames Valley Police, after which he was released under investigation.
