Royalist publicans call time at the Duke of York pub Rathbone Street

A couple of the last old school publicans have left this manor, and gone too is the swinging pub sign that made their boozer infamous.

Alan Monks and Debi Sickelmore, who ran the Duke of York on Rathbone Street for more than 20 years, have retired to the country and apparently taken with them the pub sign featuring Prince Andrew, according to the Sun newspaper whose photographer even captured the moment the sign was put into the back of a van to be taken away.

In June 2014 The Fitzrovia News reported that Sickelmore had written to Buckingham Palace requesting permission to use an image of the current Duke on the outside of the pub.

She got a reply from Andrew’s private secretary agreeing to it and saying he was very touched and so was his daughter, Princess Beatrice, who apparently had been a customer in the pub.

“I remember her coming in with friends for a drink one night,” said Sickelmore at the time.

“So we went ahead and I found a portrait of him on the internet by the Russian painter Igo Babailov which is in a private collection.” The two signs cost £500 each and were put up in 2014.

Sickelmore and Monks had managed various pubs in Fitzrovia since 1985, including the Marquis of Granby and the Grafton Arms.

In 2019, after a disastrous interview with the prince was broadcast by the BBC and his subsequent forced retirement from public life due to his association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the pub signs with the prince’s image remained, despite many local people feeling that they should be removed.

“There’s absolutely no reason that they should come down and I don’t care if people don’t like them,” said a defiant Monks at the time.

“I repeat, the signs of Andrew are going nowhere, why should they? The pub will continue celebrating and honouring Prince Andrew and all the good work he does,” he declared to the Sun newspaper. True to his word, the signs stayed.

The rather more difficult to remove corner sign remains for now but the Sun reports that it is due to be taken down shortly by the new owners of the pub, McMullen and Sons.

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