'Marry Randy Andy? I'd rather make £50m,' says the model who turned down Prince Andrew as she earns a fortune from the credit crunch

By Geoffrey Levy for MailOnline and Richard Kay
Updated: 03:03 EDT, 10 November 2008

Dinner was at Scott's in Mayfair with her 'mates' Simon Cowell and retail tycoon Sir Philip Green, and it didn't break up until the early hours. As ever, a private jet stood by, just a limousine ride away, to whisk her to the Gulf, where her closest friends and associates are its oil-rich royal families.

The name Amanda Staveley has been on everyone's lips in the world of multi-billion corporate deals since she emerged as the central figure behind the £7 billion recapitalisation of Barclays bank by Abu Dhabi's royal Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the Qatari royal family. She also put together the Sheik's surprise purchase of Manchester City Football Club.

Enterprising: Prince Andrew's former lover Amanda Staveley

Amanda hasn't had a day off for a year  -  'including Christmas Day and New Year's Eve', she tells friends. But then, consider the rewards: at 35, she is worth upwards of £100million. She has a huge house in Park Lane and another in Dubai, where she mainly lives, and where her neighbour is tennis champion Roger Federer.

Compare this with what her life might have been like had she done what her mother desperately wanted her to do and accepted a proposal of marriage from Prince Andrew.

Five years ago, the Prince was besotted with Amanda and desperate to marry her. In the two years he had known her, she had also become a Royal Family favourite. Prince Philip adored her company and let it be known in the family that he considered her to be 'an ideal choice' as the next Duchess of York.

The moment they met: Prince Andrew meeting Amanda for the first time in November 2001

In the Yorkshire village of North Stainley near Ripon, Amanda's mother, Lynne, a former champion horsewoman, and her landowning husband, Robert, shared the Queen and Prince Philip's enthusiasm for the union. Everyone wanted it  -  only Amanda was not so sure, though she didn't dismiss his proposal out of hand.

With typical thoroughness she researched the role, asking someone close to the Royal Family what her life would be like as a royal duchess and the Queen's daughter-in-law. What she heard about the restrictions and the lack of freedom of such a life, for all its privileges, was not for her.

'Andrew's a lovely man and I still care for him a great deal,' says Amanda. 'But if I'd married him, all my independence would have disappeared.'

They met in 2001 at Cambridge Science Park, where she ran conference facilities. Andrew was escorting King Abdullah of Jordan on an official fact-finding visit and she was in the line-up. He shook her hand and later  -  typically Randy Andy  -  took her phone number.

They certainly had fun together. In particular, 'Babe', as she called him, sent her saucy jokes on his world travels as Britain's trade ambassador.

Not cut out to be a passive Princess: Amanda didn't marry her Prince Charming

Amanda is 6ft in her heels, slim and athletic  -  she ran the 100m in 12.5seconds as a 14-year-old  -  and Andrew could barely conceal his excitement when they were together. She never tried to conceal the echoes of her Yorkshire accent and his friends got used to her calling them 'Luv'.

But Amanda, ambitious, independent and confident, has always followed her own agenda, a family trait. On her father's side are a series of Army generals, and the late Sir William Staveley, an Admiral of the Fleet, was a cousin.

On her mother's side is her indomitable grandmother Frances 'Frankie' Raper, a former clippie who gave up working on the buses only after her husband  -  a World War II Bomber Command Pathfinder  -  set up the biggest illegal betting shop in the North. Operating from a cellar in Doncaster, his takings sometimes reached £10,000 a day, which was huge money in the Fifties.

Eventually, betting was legalised and he bought, among other baubles, Doncaster dog track. Grandma Raper, now a frail 85, looked after Amanda while her workaholic parents developed their business interests.

With such a background of money-making and enterprise, Amanda feared from the start of her friendship with Prince Andrew that she was not cut out to be a passive princess carrying out official duties and keeping her opinions to herself.

'She'd have been completely out of place doing that  -  she's far too opinionated and outspoken,' observes a business colleague. 'But she never realised at the start of her relationship with the Prince just how seriously he would take it.' She was serious enough, though, to take up his favourite sport, golf, and to appoint him her instructor.

She was serious enough to become a regular visitor at Buckingham Palace, Sandringham and Royal Lodge, Andrew's home in Windsor Great Park, which he inherited from the Queen Mother and which Amanda helped him redecorate.

They dined romantically in his apartment at Buckingham Palace.

Another of their favourite places was Mosimann's dining club in Belgravia, with its private booths and personal butler service.

Andrew introduced Amanda to his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and they liked her a lot.

In turn, Amanda took Andrew home to North Stainley, a pretty village with three duck ponds, and to meet her parents at their imposing house near Ripon.

Businesswoman: Amanda with Ali Jassim adviser to Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in October, as Barclays is recapitalised

He got on famously with her mother and father, who had only recently sold out their interest in the Lightwater Valley theme park for £5million.

She also entertained him at her former mews house in Mayfair where her eclectic circle of friends includes fashion designer Amanda Wakeley, the billioniare property-owning Duke of Westminster and David Ross, the Carphone Warehouse tycoon  -  like her, a self-made success.

It was a relationship conducted with difficulty as both were often travelling in different parts of the world. Andrew would call and text her from wherever he was.

He was completely taken by the tall blonde who was so different from the shallow party creatures with whom he has been associated as a bed-hopping bachelor since he and Fergie divorced in 1996. Amanda was not only striking-looking, she was also incredibly clever. After boarding school, she had won a place reading modern languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

In fact, she abandoned her degree when the pressures got too much for her and spent time recovering in hospital. She never went back.

>When Andrew met her, he had just left the Royal Navy and was living at Sunninghill Park, his marital home.

She was living with her then business partner, Mark Horrocks, a venture capitalist who is a friend and colleague of Luke Johnson, Pizza Express entrepreneur and chairman of Channel 4. Soon the romance with Horrocks ended. After a series of rows, Amanda moved out of his flat.

Meanwhile her business career was taking off. It had started with a bank loan of £180,000  -  to open a restaurant called Stocks in the village of Bottisham between Cambridge and Newmarket.

Working as its chef and waitress, she was often there preparing food at 4am. At the same time, she was studying for City exams to become a financial adviser and doing some part-time modelling.

As the restaurant became popular, it brought her into contact with the rich fraternity of the racing world, especially senior figures from the Godolphin stables belonging to Dubai's rulers, the Maktoums, and the younger generation of Arab princes.

Many of them remain friends, and priceless contacts, to this day. She also got to know some of the budding technology tycoons from nearby 'Silicon Fen'.

Amanda didn't have to look far for backing for her next venture Q.ton, a conference complex with health club, gym and restaurant at Cambridge Science Park, and in 2000, aged 27, she was named Businesswoman of the Year.

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Made her fortune: The Q-Ton Club in the Cambridge Science Park which was founded by Amanda

By the time Andrew and King Abdullah were introduced to her, she was an expanding entrepreneur with interests in several businesses and many foreign contacts.

She was the perfect guide to the world of trade and deals into which the Prince had suddenly been pitched as Britain's trade envoy.

Indeed, there could hardly have been a more mutually beneficial relationship than this one between the brilliantly connected but commercially gauche Prince and the beautiful deal-maker. Each has been able to open doors for the other.

No one who knows Amanda thinks she needed a royal leg-up to establish herself  -  though being Prince Andrew's girlfriend for two years was hardly a hindrance.

On balance, in the sometimes shadowy world of international deals and trade, it is the globe-trotting Prince Andrew who has benefited from the relationship because of Amanda's knowledge and contacts.

'He's done an awful lot in the Middle East for British business,' she was saying only this week.

This area of the world, of course, is where she has most of her important contacts and it would be inconceivable, if Andrew needed guidance or help, for her not to give it.

Aware of her influence, on occasions, the Prince has put her in touch with his business friends.

For her part, Amanda privately says that being the Prince's consort was highly restricting, commercially.

For example, she had the chance to acquire a stake in the lapdancing club chain Spearmint Rhino, but passed it up as she was going out with the Prince and such an investment would have been seen as 'inappropriate'.

'Imagine, Randy Andy's girl owning a pole-dancing emporium,' she told a friend.

In the end, she not only missed her Spearmint Rhino opportunity, but also declined the offer of marrying the fourth in line to the throne. Proud as her parents are of her achievements, her decision to reject Prince Andrew desperately disappointed her mother.

'I think Mum took three years to get over it,' Amanda has joked.

It is hard now to think of Amanda Staveley as a model princess, cutting ribbons, opening hospitals and admiring others' achievements.

Her expanding private financial advisory firm, PCP Capital Partners  -  former Tory minister David Mellor joins as a partner next month  -  creamed off commissions totalling £110 million in the two deals she helped put together for Sheik Mansour and the Qatari royal family. After payments to other advisers, the company made more than £50million.

Andrew, meanwhile, has never got Amanda out of his system and often calls her. They remain good friends and met up in August in the South of France where he was on holiday and she on business. He took her to a club for dinner and dancing. Just this week they spoke on the phone.

Now 48, Andrew has no regular girlfriend. Nor does Amanda have a boyfriend. When she takes her first holiday in 15 months this Christmas, she will be joining old friends in Barbados.

'Business and romance don't really mix,' she sighed this week. 'Anyway, whoever marries me would have to be a hell of a hero to put up with me.'

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