Prince Andrew Pizza Express Woking reviews suspended

BBC/Google Prince AndrewBBC/Google
Prince Andrew's Newsnight interview prompted a number of spoof reviews for Pizza Express in Woking

TripAdvisor has suspended reviews for the Pizza Express restaurant Prince Andrew referenced during his interview about his links to Jeffrey Epstein.

During the interview on BBC's Newsnight, the Prince denied sleeping with then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.

He said he instead spent the day in question with Princess Beatrice at the Pizza Express restaurant in Woking.

A TripAdvisor spokeswoman said the recent media attention caused a spike in spoof reviews.

Reviews of the restaurant following the interview appear to have been deleted and the most recent is dated one week ago.

Prince Andrew: "Going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do"

A spokeswoman for the website said: "The recent media attention caused a spike of spoof review submissions that did not meet our guidelines... and we have taken the decision to temporarily suspend hosting new reviews on the restaurant's TripAdvisor listing page."

Speaking to the BBC's Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew denied he slept with Ms Giuffre, one of Epstein's victims, on three separate occasions, saying one encounter on 10 March 2001 did not happen as he spent the day with his daughter.

He said: "I was with the children and I'd taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at, I suppose, sort of 4pm or 5pm in the afternoon."

When asked why he would remember a meal at Pizza Express 18 years later, he said: "Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do, a very unusual thing for me to do."

Within minutes of his explanation, TripAdvisor and Google were flooded with fake reviews.

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