You’re Nobody If You’re Not In Them: Inside the Mind of High Society After the Epstein File Release
There are moments in live television that make you question everything you thought you knew about human nature. Friday afternoon on LBC was one of those moments.
Lady Victoria Hervey, a 49-year-old socialite who once dated a member of the British royal family, appeared on the radio show to discuss the latest release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. What followed was a masterclass in how differently the wealthy elite view the world compared to the rest of us.
Most people mentioned in those millions of pages of court documents have gone to ground. Lawyers have been hired. Publicists are working overtime. Carefully worded denials are being issued through official channels. The strategy is simple: distance, deny, disappear until the news cycle moves on.
Lady Victoria had a different approach entirely.
The Statement That Stopped Everyone Cold
Host Tom Swarbrick asked her about being named in the files 23 times. Her response wasn’t what anyone expected.
“Of course I am,” she said casually, as if they were discussing an appearance in the society pages rather than court documents related to one of the most notorious criminals in modern history. “Because it’s any journalist who wrote about it.”
But it was what came next that left Swarbrick visibly stunned.
When he mentioned that former President Donald Trump appeared hundreds of times in the documents, Lady Victoria didn’t miss a beat. She explained that Epstein “knew everybody that was very powerful.”
Then she said it: “If you were on the scene and you were powerful, to be honest, if you’re not in those files, it would be an insult because it just means that you were a bit of a loser.”
Read that again. According to Lady Victoria, NOT being mentioned in documents related to a convicted sex offender means you didn’t matter. You weren’t important enough. You were nobody.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Elite Circles
To understand how someone arrives at this perspective, you have to understand the world Lady Victoria comes from. She’s the daughter of the 6th Marquess of Bristol. She dated a prince. She was what the British tabloids used to call an “It Girl” in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In that world, power and proximity to power are everything. Your value is measured by who you know, who you’ve been photographed with, which parties you attend, whose phone calls you can return.
From that altitude, the Epstein documents aren’t a catalogue of people who should be investigated. They’re a social register. A list of people who mattered enough to be noticed, written about, connected to influence.
It’s a worldview so completely removed from how ordinary people think that it almost doesn’t sound real. But Lady Victoria wasn’t joking. She wasn’t trying to be provocative. She genuinely seemed to believe what she was saying.
The Defense of an Ex
But Lady Victoria’s comments didn’t stop at defending her own appearance in the files. She also had plenty to say about her former boyfriend, the man who once held the title of Duke of York before being stripped of his royal honors.
“He’s a male, he’s single, he needs to date,” she told Swarbrick, her tone suggesting this was all perfectly reasonable. “He’s not going to be sitting in a monastery his whole life.”
She painted a picture of a man who “trusted” Epstein, who thought his longtime friend “knows beautiful women” and saw that “so many other people” were involved that it couldn’t be that bad.
It was a defense that seemed to completely miss the point of why people are disturbed by these connections. The problem isn’t that powerful men were socializing. The problem is what was allegedly happening while they were socializing.
The Moment She Knew Something Was Wrong
The most fascinating part of Lady Victoria’s story is that she actually had good instincts once upon a time.
During a 2019 appearance on Good Morning Britain, she revealed that Epstein had invited her to stay in one of his apartments in the early 2000s. She went, but something felt off immediately.
“I felt uncomfortable staying there,” she said at the time. “I cut my trip short and felt I was being watched, like there were hidden cameras, and I left after about 10 days and moved in with a friend of mine.”
She continued: “But even before I knew anything that’s come out since, I felt it.”
There it is. The moment her gut told her something wasn’t right. The moment she could have walked away from that entire world and never looked back.
Instead, years later, she’s on the radio defending the very people and systems that made her feel watched and uncomfortable. She’s explaining why being connected to all of this is actually a badge of honor if you’re important enough.
What the Host Really Thought
Tom Swarbrick didn’t hide his reaction. After the interview ended, he told his listeners he was “taken aback” by her “astonishing attitude.”
“I find that jaw-dropping,” he said, his words carrying the weight of someone who had just witnessed something he couldn’t quite believe.
And he wasn’t alone. Social media exploded after clips of the interview started circulating. People couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Was she really saying that being associated with this was a good thing? That it meant you were somebody?
Yes. That’s exactly what she was saying.
The Disconnect Between Two Worlds
This interview perfectly captures the canyon-wide gap between how the ultra-wealthy elite view the world and how everyone else does.
In Lady Victoria’s world, the worst thing that can happen to you isn’t being connected to scandal. It’s being irrelevant. It’s not mattering. It’s being the kind of person who doesn’t get invited, doesn’t get noticed, doesn’t appear in the documents.
Better to be infamous than unknown. Better to be controversial than invisible.
For the rest of us, the calculation is completely different. We teach our children to choose their friends carefully, to be judged by the company they keep, to walk away from situations that feel wrong.
But when you’re born into aristocracy, when you’ve spent your entire life at the top of the social pyramid, different rules seem to apply. Scandal washes off eventually. Invitations still arrive. Doors still open.
Until suddenly, they don’t.
The Price of Being Connected
It’s worth noting that appearing in these documents doesn’t automatically mean wrongdoing. Journalists, lawyers, investigators, and innocent bystanders all appear throughout these files. Simply being mentioned proves nothing on its own.
But Lady Victoria’s defense wasn’t “I’m in there innocently.” It was “of course I’m in there, and if you’re not, you weren’t important enough.”
That attitude, more than the appearance in the files themselves, is what left people speechless.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just celebrity gossip or royal family drama. This is a window into how power protects itself, how the wealthy rationalize their connections, how elite circles close ranks.
Lady Victoria Hervey said out loud what many in her world have been thinking privately. She just didn’t realize how shocking it would sound to everyone else.
In her world, these documents are embarrassing but survivable. A temporary inconvenience. Something to explain away on radio shows with confident assertions about who was and wasn’t powerful enough to matter.
In our world, they’re evidence. They’re accountability. They’re a long-overdue look at systems that allowed terrible things to happen because the people involved thought they were too important for consequences.
The real question isn’t why Lady Victoria defended her appearance in these files.
The real question is how many other people in positions of power think exactly the same way but are smart enough not to say it on live radio.