Prince Andrew's disgraceful embroiling in the sex trafficking scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has been dredged up again as Maxwell speaks out about her "dear friend" the Duke - and makes a U-turn on a damning piece of evidence against the royal.

In a world exclusive interview from the jail cell where she is set to languish for 20 years, Maxwell told author and film-maker for The Mail on Sunday, Daphne Barak, she feels "so bad" for the Prince.

"I follow what is happening to him," said Maxwell, who sex trafficked teenage girls for paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, "the greatest regret" of her life.

Reportedly shaken when she learned Andrew's lawyers were claiming the pair never held a close acquaintance, Maxwell is said to have quipped with sadness: "I accept that this friendship could not survive my conviction.

"He is paying such a price for the association. I consider him a dear friend. I care about him."

Ghislaine Maxwell has revealed her association with Jeffrey Epstein (left) has become "the greatest regret of my life''. Photo / Getty Images

The timing of Maxwell's bombshell interview falls amid the Prince's ongoing attempt to salvage his public image after he was accused of raping Virginia Giuffre when she was a teenage victim of Epstein. He settled the case with a reported payment of $21.5 million (US$12m).

And while Oxford-graduate Maxwell refused to deny allegations she was once in a relationship with Prince Andrew, she has changed her tune on the biggest piece of evidence against the Duke:

Ghislaine Maxwell has contradicted her initial claims about the authenticity of what became a damning image of Prince Andrew with his accuser, Virginia Giuffre. Photo / Getty Images

It's the infamous image of the Prince with his arm around a young Giuffre. Maxwell, also present and smiling in the background, now insists the image is forged.

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"This photo is not real," Maxwell tells Barak of the shot allegedly taken at her London home in March 2001.

"There was never an original one produced." According to The Sun, Maxwell would not be drawn further on Giuffre, telling Barak dismissively: "I don't even want to start talking about Virginia."

But the above contradicts her previous claims about the image, first raised in what became a damning email brought to light back in 2015.

When asked by Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz if the picture was real, she said: "It looks real. I think it is."

However, according to The Sun, when Barak came to question her about it, she told her: "I don't recognise that picture and I don't believe it is a real picture." Attempting to clarify her response, she said all she'd intended to say in her email was that she recognised the interiors of her own house.

"... But I have come to discover that image I don't believe is true. And the original has never been produced because it doesn't exist. I don't believe that image is a true image."

Asked to explain her initial response to Epstein's lawyer, she said: "If you see a photograph and it's a photograph of you in your home, and someone says to you, 'is that a picture of you?' So you don't question."

She said at the time of initial inquiry, it "would never occur to me ... that somebody would have created a photograph or, you know, done something with a picture …  I recognised the surroundings of that photograph, nothing more than that."

She went on to claim there are "over 50 problems with the picture" that led her to conclude that it was a fake.

Prince Andrew snapped spending time in Florida with Epstein. Photo / Getty Images

Of reports she and the Prince had once been romantically involved, she said: "I have read and seen and heard and had reported to me so many monstrous inaccuracies that I can't even start to pick apart all of them."

However, she added that, "after the appeal, I'm going to be super-happy to address with you any of those things."

Asked if she thought there was a possibility she and the Prince could find a friendship in the future, she said: "I don't have an expectation. People who I have been friends with — and very close friends with … I can't think about what they will want to do or not do."