Pizza Express investigated Andrew’s Woking alibi after Newsnight interview

Pizza Express carried out an internal investigation into Andrew’s claim that he had visited its Woking branch with Princess Beatrice, a detail that became one of the most widely mocked moments of his BBC Newsnight interview.

The alibi was aired on 16 November 2019, when Andrew said he had been at Pizza Express in Woking for a birthday party and described the trip as “a very unusual thing” for him to do. The branch at the centre of the claim is on Goldsworth Road, and the exchange quickly became inseparable from the wider interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre.

The restaurant was drawn into the fallout almost immediately. TripAdvisor suspended new reviews for the Woking branch after it was flooded with mock posts, underscoring how a single factual claim from the interview had spilled into public ridicule and online abuse. What might once have sounded like a minor logistical detail instead became a shorthand for Andrew’s failed attempt to explain away the allegations against him.

Emily Maitlis later said the BBC had considered cutting the Pizza Express explanation because it would make Andrew look ridiculous. She also said Andrew wanted a second interview so he could repeat the alibi after forgetting to mention it the first time. That account underlined how central the claim had become inside the interview itself, even before it took on a life of its own outside the studio.

The Woking story has continued to resurface in coverage of Andrew’s legal and reputational problems, including reporting around his civil sex-assault case and later releases of US court documents. The persistence of the alibi shows how a seemingly mundane family outing became part of a larger credibility test for a senior royal, and why an internal inquiry into a pizza branch on Goldsworth Road still carries institutional weight years later.