The recent revelations about Sarah Fergusons over spending was largely already known. The enormous amounts spent on flowers, renting villas that were never used, paying professionals hundreds of pounds to wait for hours before she gets up for treatments. But this excerpt reveals how she never thought about minimising waste in even small ways.
"A sacked staff member revealed the greed and wastefulness that contributed to the duchess's financial downfall: 'Every night she demands a whole side of beef, a leg of lamb and a chicken, which are laid out on the dining room table like a medieval banquet. It's a feast that would make Henry VIII proud.
'But often there is just her and her girls, Bea and Eugenie, and most of it is wasted. There is no attempt to keep it to have cold the next day. It just sits there all night, and the next day it's thrown away.' Sometimes the meals would go virtually untouched while the duchess and her daughters munched on Kettle crisps."
Posted by Lazy_Age_9466
20 comments
I’m sorry but the side of beef, leg of lamb and a chicken sounds like utter bull. People don’t eat that way today. it sounds more like a bitter ex-employee who was fired and making up stories
Id believe caviar and goose liver more
They are really coming for Sarah in order to distract us from Andrew and the new revelations about him. Also, distract from Charles’ continued support of Andrew and his well documented association with pedophiles. They must be shitting themselves about what’s in the Epstein files to be trying to build outrage about Sarah.
Her and her ex are both delusional, spiiked fuckwits
This is a very old story. This came out I bet 20 or more years ago.
Sounds nuts. Distracting from the real problems!
The daily mail never fails to sensationalize a story without real facts or meaning. They always make the story seem like MI6 agents were involved in leaking
its secrets to an intelligence agency.
“The recent revelations about SF was largely already known…”
Well, at least they gave you permission to stop reading right out the gate.
In other news, water is wet.
She has had money issues that the royal family refused to take care of going back years. A quick Google search will show articles going back 20+ years. There is a new book out, which is why all of these articles are coming, rehashing all of this. Doesn’t make it right, no. But nobody should be shocked or surprised.
Most of this is already quite well known. This is maybe just filling in the details a bit. I’ve always found her highly likely and bawdy but know there’s a more sinister side to all of this. Reading how she really took financial advantage in her “charity work” is particularly disheartening.
I also can’t help but do comparisons…
>There was growing Press comment on her holidays, with five in seven months – three skiing trips to Switzerland, visits to Bermuda and California, and ten days, part of it with Princess Diana, at a villa in the South of France.
Ummm… there’s another current royal couple that probably way out do her on taking frequent and extravagant holidays. 😆
I also can’t help but compare her to Meghan. Meghan is absolutely excoriated in the press for situations that barely even begin to match Sarah’s yet Sarah has been given a near free pass by the press and the royal family in comparison. Especially around commercial ventures.
None of this is surprising. It’s well known she has a spending problem and has repeatedly gotten into trouble over it. This may just be filling in some details. And, I’m not so sure I even believe all of them.
And it really seems like she’s never learned to rein it in. I remember her doing stuff for weight watchers and other commercial ventures
This definitely makes me feel for their daughters. How do you grow up to be a sensible person if you have no one modeling good behavior for you as a child??
I’ve also found Fergie to be highly likely and funny and bawdy but also know from all the stories about her there’s a really messed up side to her.
“**at one point she owed up to £4million to 200 creditors.**”
“In the summer of 1994 she rented Domaine La Fontaine near Cannes for £20,000.Though it was dubbed self-catering, she was accompanied by a butler, two housekeepers, a dresser, a general assistant and a nanny. Two other assistants flew in and out; two Scotland Yard protection officers were there to protect the royal daughters.A truck from England brought sun loungers and swimming pool toys for the children and five extra telephone lines were installed, one at the pool. There was a daily delivery of wine, including Laurent-Perrier rosé champagne and her favourite Puligny-Montrachet at £60 a bottle, often opened and then not drunk.While she was there, the duchess received a call from Romenda Lodge – her six-bedroomed rented house with swimming pool back in England where she’d installed a marble ensuite bathroom for herself and six new telephone lines – telling her that the electricity company was threatening to cut her off over an unpaid bill for £1,400. She had refused to sign the cheque before her departure, saying: ‘I’m not interested.'”
“Speaking to the National Press Club in Washington in December 1994, the duchess claimed to be short of money: ‘I’m a separated mother of two, largely responsible for the finances of my family. It really bugs me when I read that I’m a millionairess through my Budgie books. It’s rubbish.’But City analysts estimated her earnings from Budgie over the next five years would be £2.8 million from merchandising alone. Some 58 companies had licensed rights, attracted by its royal connections – emblazoned across all Budgie products was ‘HRH The Duchess of York’. Her private secretary admitted that no percentage was now going to charities as previously [promised.In](http://promised.In) 1995, she moved house, to an eight-bedroom property set in 12 acres with an all-weather tennis court, outdoor swimming pool, two-bedroom guest cottage and chauffeur’s flat with a gipsy caravan in the garden for the children.Appearing in Hello! magazine for the tenth time – recent articles had covered skiing holidays, Beatrice’s sports day, a polo match and her involvement with the Young Victoria film (for which she had been paid £50,000) – she explained that she was in such financial straits she would have to concentrate on earning money rather than her charity work.But in spite of pleading poverty she still employed a butler, chauffeur, cook and secretary, and spent £16,000 annually on phone bills. Her expenses included not only the £6,000 monthly rent, but a staff bill of £32,000 a month.The previous week she had spent £25,000 on frocks, shoes and handbags, and £3,000 on a champagne tea party for the 150 builders and removal men who had helped her move.A World In Action film claimed money earmarked for Romanian orphans had been eaten up by Sarah’s generous expenses and that she had personally pocketed £7,000 for an article in Hello! on a trip to an orphanage in Moldova.”
“In mid-January 1996, Palace officials revealed the Queen had met Sarah’s debts on ‘several’ occasions – involving six-figure cash sums, including one very large amount in April 1994 when Coutts had demanded she pay £500,000 within 14 days. But the Queen was drawing a line. A Palace statement said: ‘The Duchess’s financial affairs are no longer Her Majesty’s concern but matters which the Duchess of York must discuss and resolve with her bankers and other financial advisers.’Friends were also losing patience. One who had lent her £100,000 to pay for a holiday in the South of France threatened to sue the duchess at the High Court after she paid back only £5,000, claiming she understood the rest to be a gift. She owed her hairdresser £40 for hair done months ago.But still the spending went on – £14,000 in just one month with a particular London wine merchant.
Over the previous year Sarah had travelled to Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Poland and made four trips to America, each time staying at the luxury Carlyle Hotel, where the cheapest suite was £330 a night.On a three-day visit to New York, she had one car to take her to the airport and another for her ten suitcases, all tissue-lined, with more outfits than she could hope to wear. Her assistant Christine Gallagher had once been sent on Concorde, at a cost of £5,000, to bring her some paperwork.
In a newspaper article, her former lover and financial adviser John Bryan revealed that her £860,000 annual expenditure included £300,000 on staff, £150,000 on gifts, £50,000 on flowers, £50,000 on parties, £150,000 on travel and £100,000 on clothes – £25,000 of it in an hour’s spending spree in Bloomingdales.
The finances of the duchess’s American charity Chances for Children now came under scrutiny. As a non-profit-making organisation, it did not have to pay tax and its office on Sixth Avenue was provided rent-free by US News & World Report, the weekly owned by Mortimer Zuckerman, a powerful contact of Sarah’s.There were concerns, though, that the charity was also being used as the US branch of her private office, with staff there required to locate her favourite perfume and fix meetings with fortune tellers, diet doctors, hair stylists and manicurists .One investigation found that less than half of the £110,000 donated to the charity was going to sick children.
Tax records showed that over a six-month period wages and expenses came to £58,500, with only £40,000 being charitable donations. As the investigative article exposing this went public, she was on holiday in the Bahamas with her daughters.Some of her declared charities received nothing at all. The Sarah Ferguson Foundation claimed to help the Littlest Lamb orphanage with a ‘substantial donation’ to build a kids’ home in Cairo, but its director Mira Riad revealed: ‘She has never paid us.’
Meanwhile, she continued to live beyond her means, employing a cook, driver, maid, butler, dresser, nanny, three secretaries, a personal assistant, lady-in-waiting, two gardeners, flower arranger and dog walker.An accountant brought in to cut costs asked one member of staff what he did, and received the reply: ‘I pick up the dog poo.’ ‘And you?’ he asked, pointing to the person beside him. ‘I help him.'”
“The tantrums kept staff turnover high. ‘Car journeys are the worst,’ said one aide. ‘She will sit on the phone screaming at employees and reduce everyone to wrecks. Then she will wonder why we are so unhappy.'”
With parents like theirs I’m so happy that Eugenie and Beatrice turned out normal. They seem like wonderful women and great parents themselves.
“Part of the problem was the sheer wastage. In May 2009, she signed a year’s lease on a house at £8,000 a month but stayed with Andrew at Royal Lodge instead. The result was £50,000 spent on a house she never lived in.
At this point the duke and his deputy private secretary, Amanda Thirsk, stepped in and assessed the duchess’s overheads. Twelve staff were made redundant, some of whom hadn’t been paid for up to six months.They included Colin Tebbutt, her driver for ten years who had previously driven for Princess Diana, her long-standing dresser Jackie McLeod and Sally Fish, her right-hand woman for 15 years.
Many received only the statutory minimum redundancy pay and were asked to work out their notice for free.
Andrew, or more likely his mother, paid off many of the debts. Creditors of Hartmoor, Sarah’s lifestyle and wellness company, were paid 25 per cent of the money they were owed. Two hire cars were returned, attempts were made to sell the duchess’s Mini Cooper S and a valuation was sought on a £130,000 Bentley Continental Flying Spur, which had been lent to her.
Sarah’s reaction to crisis, as so often, was to go on holiday. First stop Sotogrande in Spain, then to a £1,500-a-night five-star Portuguese luxury spa resort, where she signed up for an eight-day £3,000 weight-loss and anti-ageing programme, which included her own personal trainer and face mesotherapy involving extracts being injected into the skin.”
Gross.
What did Fergie do to piss off the tabloids or is buckingham palace just trying to distract from something else
Comments are closed.