BBC Newsnight has learned that Pizza Express ran an internal inquiry in 2019 into Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's claim that he took his daughter to its Woking branch on 10 March 2001. The chain searched records and tried to contact former local staff but found no documentation, and concluded it had no evidence to confirm or disprove his account. Newsnight’s own checks also found no record of any customer or staff member seeing him at the restaurant that night. The Woking reference came from Mountbatten Windsor's 2019 Newsnight interview, given amid Virginia Giuffre's allegation that she was forced to have sex with him three times, including on 10 March 2001. Mountbatten Windsor did not respond to a request for comment for this report and has consistently denied wrongdoing. Newsnight revisited the interview after the release of the Epstein files and after Thames Valley Police arrested Mountbatten Windsor in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office; he was later released under investigation.
