Who gained the most from Ghislaine Maxwell's US prison interview with Jeremy Kyle?

If there's one thing we don't hear enough about it is the range of prison food options. Which is why Ghislaine Maxwell's interview with Talk TV was quite the insight.

Tofu, beans, hummus, cottage cheese, and back to tofu again as the convicted sex offender lamented the lack of seasoning on offer in her Florida prison. Being a vegetarian, as Ghislaine described, led to limited food options.

She said: "The portion control is very odd. And when like me you're on a no meat diet, you're supposed to have either hummus or cottage cheese or tofu for you but most of the time, I'd say about 95 percent, it's tofu if it's anything or beans. 95 percent, it's beans or otherwise you have a tofu substitute. And then the tofu has no seasoning, there's no seasoning allowed. No salt or pepper or anything. So it's beyond tasteless."

If you wished to learn more about Ghislaine's diet then this is a must-watch. If, however, you want to have a deeper understanding of why this woman was involved with Jeffrey Epstein, who ran a sex trafficking pyramid which Maxwell is convicted of providing the girls for, then you're going to be disappointed.

She also called Prince Andrew her 'dear friend' and branded the accusations against him baseless in a desperate new defence of the Duke in her first interview with Talk TV.

Maxwell, 61, branded the infamous photo of her with Prince Andrew - showing his arm around accuser Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre), then 17 - as 'fake', triggering a backlash as victims condemned her controversial remarks.

The hour-long show was problematic for a few reasons. It gave a platform to a woman who is a convicted sex offender and allowed a less challenging interview to take place than the one people would've been expecting. There's the defending of Prince Andrew, who no-doubt had his head in his hands as he watched a convicted sex offender and former friend coming to his aid.

A further issue with the programme is the lack of insights overall. Ghislaine is a fractured soul who had a childhood which may explain her later bad-choices. Her father was the disgraced media mogul, Robert Maxwell, who took his own life in 1991.

The BBC series 'House of Maxwell' looks at issues of Ghislaine's childhood and these are not touched upon at all in the hour-long show, despite her siblings involvement in parts of the footage that was aired.

They did bring on psycho-analysts to Talk TV who labelled Ghislaine a 'narcissist' which is often a term bandied around with abandon for a cheap headline. In the case of Ghislaine, this may be true, but there's so much more to this story and narcissism tends to stem from neglect and abuse in childhood.

Maxwell was jailed for 20 years in June 2022 after being convicted in the US of masterminding a scheme to round up schoolgirls for Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein to molest. Ghislaine had two US presidents, a Pope and A-lister celebrities on speed-dial on her phone.

She did say on the Jeremy Kyle fronted Talk TV show that she rued the day she met Epstein.

She said: "I honestly wish I had never met him." Laughing, she added: "I didn't know that he was so awful. I mean obviously now, looking back with hindsight, of course. But at the time, I mean he had lots of friends. He was friendly with just about everybody you could imagine."

Who has gained the most from this interview? It's hard to see how Ghislaine has gained anything. It hasn't made her story more sympathetic or increased her chances of an early release. She was also 'not paid a damn penny' as Kyle stressed at the end of the programme.

Prince Andrew has not gained anything by having the words of Ghislaine on his side. Nobody would want a convicted sex offender to defend them.

Victims of the sexual offences levelled against Ghislaine and Jeffrey - before his mysterious prison suicide which some believe was murder (including Ghislaine) - have not gained anything, as they are pitted against the people they accuse and branded unreliable for any small lapses in memory.

The only real winners of Ghislaine's interview is Talk TV and Jeremy Kyle. It rebrands Kyle, or attempts to, as he resurrects his career.