This is a story that is going to make you long, oh so deeply long, for the days of Toe-Sucking Fergie: When the worst thing the former Duchess of York was alleged to have done was waltzed off to the South of France to get ‘financial advice’ from a man who applied himself to her tootsies like man holding a melting Paddle Pop.
And now? Tablets. Psychics paid with cigs. “Sleazy” boyfriends. The claims about Fergie are getting far less cheeky, rumpy-pumpy and a whole lot more sordid.
This week we have a tranche of fresh allegations about Sarah Ferguson, courtesy of the revised, bulked out paperback version of Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York set to be published this month. Based on the extract that has run in the Daily Mail, the added claims about the former Duchess of York read like a Jackie Collins manuscript her editor would have rejected for being too salacious.
It’s worth noting that sources of Lownie’s new material are, as he wrote on his Substack, “dozens of former staff and associates [who] have spoken to me and many of them on the record” since Entitled was originally published last year.
Or you could say, these new claims come from the horsey set and their not so loyal retainers’ mouths.
The claim that has gotten the most headlines so far is that Fergie had a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with disgraced rapper P. Diddy and who is serving a four-year sentence for prostitution-related offences.
The only good thing to say about this mind melding pairing, if there is any truth to it, is at least they were both consenting adults.
That their staff weren’t dragged into it. Because if you think your job can sometimes be a right punish, spare a thought for the brave and hardy souls who signed on to join Team Fergie.
One assistant told Lownie that life with the former HRH was “chaotic” and that this staffer, along with other employees, “had problems getting paid.” So bad was it that “they often had to buy things using their own credit cards.”
Were they also asked, you have to wonder, BYO loo roll and teabags?
But this is just the tip of the Ferg-berg.
Ever since the 90s, the ex duchess has been famed for her parlous finances, Icarus-like constantly flying towards the perpetually skint sun, however the lengths she would resort to really defy dignity. According to Lownie, “Sarah herself drew on Beatrice’s credit card constantly and paid one psychic in cigarettes. She rarely paid for anything, expecting to be given products for free or be entertained by friends.”
Yet somehow Fergie still seemed to live a life such that Louis XIV might have suggested she pull her head in. Take the apartment she maintained in New York or the “personal trainers waited on call but were never used”. There was “one person”, Lownie writes, “employed just to organise all the tablets Sarah took.” (Bet that looked good on their LinkedIn.)
This jibes with the picture the historian painted of her in his original hardback, of a woman who lived like a Tudor Queen if Henry VII had been really into shag pile carpeting.
One former staff member described life with a newly divorced Fergie: “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. But often there is just her and her girls Bea and Eugenie and most of it is wasted … It just sits there all night and the next day it’s thrown away.”
Other Henry-worth profligacy: On holiday in Spain, rising to greet the day at 2pm she “ordered a lavish party for later that day.”
A guest said: “She demanded the best DJ in the country and 1,000 candles to light the garden. Then she became fixated with getting a suckling pig.”
(Side note – Whoever knew she was such an ardent carnivore? And no snickering in the back row!)
Other details from Enfield: She would travel with 25 suitcases including one just for coat hanger and which cost her up to $8,000 excess baggage; She once spent $10,000 to fly her assistant to New York on the Concorde – she could bring her some paperwork.
But you know what they say – pipers need paying and throwing yourself Marie Antoinette-ish bacchanals with extra pork crackling need someone to help pick up the tab.
At one point, Lownie notes, Fergie “was so desperate for money she offered to work as a house assistant” to Epstein.
Unfortunately no one ever taught Fergs, whose entire secondary education was learning to clatter away on an IBM Selectric at secretarial college and drinking Avocat at Annabel’s, and so missed out on being dosed up on 70s feminism and never learnt that a man is not a financial plan.
A Palm Beach friend of Epstein told Lownie: “Fergie made no secret how she wanted to marry someone in the US who was wealthy and powerful. If Jeffrey popped the question, she would have said yes. Even after … he was convicted of being a sex offender. She had a reputation for being an opportunist and for sleeping with wealthy men.”
Emails released by the Department of Justice show Fergie calling the pedophile a “legend” and saying “I am at your service … Just marry me.”
Even when not angling to become Mrs Jeffrey Epstein, Fergie really did not show good taste in men. As a Palace source pointed out to Lownie she has something of a type: “Look at her long history; every man she dated or associated with had a controversial past – they all have sleazy and chequered pasts. She likes to live on the edge. She can’t settle down with a good man. It would bore her to tears.”
Boredom is probably something that she can only dream about these days as she continues to hide out in whatever Alpine rehab offering four-figure seaweed wraps will bung her a freebie and she tries to hit redial on her King Charles’ third lowest courtier’s second mobile phone to see if they can spare her a tenner.
She has not responded to any of the new claims.
Zoom out for a moment and it’s worth keeping in mind that her perpetually-on-thin-ice finances that would set in motion some of the events that would lead to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s de-princing and arrest. (He has previously denied any wrongdoing.)
In late 2010, battling to stave off bankruptcy, Andrew flew to New York to see if his nice mate Jeff could help his ex-wife out. In fact, as Vanity Fair’s Mark Seal has reported, the then Duke of York “entered the rattlesnake’s den for what turned out to be a mere $USD125,000 [$172,000]”, to settle the unpaid wages and bills she owed her former assistant, Johnny O’Sullivan, in unpaid bills and wages. This sum “was a small fraction of the more than $USD7 [$9.65] million that Ferguson owed” at that point.
It was during that New York trip that Andrew would be photographed walking in Central Park with, by then, convicted sex offender Epstein, firing the starting gun on Andrew’s downfall, disgrace and other ‘d’ words.
Meanwhile could Fergie be working on a ‘d’ word of her own? Deal.
There has been much speculation that the woman who has been forced to bin her crested doodle pads might write a tell-all or do an Oprah-style interview to bring in some cash and as a reputational clean up effort, which is like trying to mop up Hurricane Katrina with a hankie. (Imelda Marcos’ reputation would not have been saved by a ghostwriter’s tender recounting of her inner turmoil at not being able to find the perfect Manolo or getting a sympathetic turn on a daytime TV sofa.)
If all of this leaves you shaking your head, your surname is clearly not Windsor.
A royal source told Lownie: “Several people, notably the Queen, ex-Prince Andrew and Prince Charles, were aware of her activities for years but turned a blind eye to protect the family from more scandal.”
Well, that tactic worked a treat now didn’t? And I bet Crown Inc finds themselves in the strangest of places – also wishing that the grubbiest that Fergie was up to was having her toes eagerly slurped.
Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience with Australia’s leading media titles.