It was on the couch of an opulent apartment in Mayfair, one of London’s wealthiest areas, that Sarah Ferguson hit one of her lowest ebbs.
Cigarette in hand, she sat in front of a half-drunk bottle of wine and $US40,000 ($61,000) in cash.
Ferguson had just agreed to provide a foreign businessman access to Prince Andrew, her ex-husband, in return for a payment of half a million British pounds ($1.01m).
“That opens up everything you would ever wish for,” she told the man.
“I can open any door you want, and I will for you.”
However, that foreign businessman was an undercover journalist secretly recording the interaction for the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World.
Sarah Ferguson was covertly filmed by a tabloid journalist posing as a business entrepreneur in 2010. (Supplied)
The story caused headlines around the globe when the footage came out in May 2010, and laid bare the financial issues Ferguson had been facing.
“I very deeply regret the situation and the embarrassment caused,” she said in a statement released shortly after it was revealed.
“It is true that my financial situation is under stress, however, that is no excuse for a serious lapse in judgement and I am very sorry that this has happened.”
She later said she had been drinking and was “not in my right place”.
“It was an extraordinary scandal,” historian and royal biographer Andrew Lownie told the ABC.
“No-one thought that she could come back for it, but within weeks she was on Oprah, she was basically saying she was a victim that she had sort of learned her lesson.”
Despite the negative headlines, Ferguson bounced back and eventually found herself back in Queen Elizabeth’s good graces.
Ferguson was entrusted by the late Queen to take care of her corgis Sandy and Muick after her death. (Instagram: sarahferguson15)
“She was plausible, she was outgoing, she was a bit of fun telling jokes and so on,” Peter Thompson, who wrote the biography Fergie Confidential, told the ABC.
“And that was all a facade.”
A lifetime of debt
The News of the World sting painted a picture of the depths Ferguson was willing to go to to get money.
And for the former duchess of York, getting into large debt stretches back decades — as far back to the breakdown of her marriage with former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor in the early 1990s.
“The financial woes of Sarah Ferguson go back a long way,” Lownie said.
“I think very soon after she became a member of the royal family, she realised that she was in the sweetie shop and she could go wild.“
Ferguson, seen here driving past paparazzi amid publicised financial woes in 1996, was rarely out of the headlines. (AP: Max Nash)
According to Lownie’s book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, Ferguson liked to spend big — often racking up tens of thousands of pounds of bills at luxury London department stores like Harrods and Selfridges.
“She lived very extravagantly with extensive staffs in very expensive rented homes, often renting things when she could have been cheaper to buy them,” Lownie said.
“Often missing flights and then not having them refunded.
“I mean, there are talks of literally 25 suitcases of things that she would bring back as excess luggage and a special car having to come to carry them all with coat hangers and stuff in them.”
And when she couldn’t pay, sometimes it was her mother-in-law, the Queen, stepping in to help pay those debts off.
But by the time she and Andrew officially divorced in 1996, the Queen’s patience had run out, leading to Buckingham Palace putting out an astonishing statement to distance the royal family from Ferguson’s financial dealings.
“The Queen has made a generous provision to the Duchess of York over a number of years,” a palace spokesperson said at the time.
“Her business ventures are conducted quite separately from any royal duties, and any transactions resulting from them must be resolved between the Duchess and her business associates and creditors.”
Around that time, the money she owed was reported to be anywhere from one to five million British pounds.
Books and charitable causes
Sarah Ferguson poses with two of her children’s books at her book signing in Pasadena, California, in December 1996. (AP: Holly Stein)
Amid her split with Andrew, Ferguson’s career as an author was taking off, first with children’s books before moving onto autobiographies and self-help books, which coincided with her career as a spokesperson for the US weight loss company Weight Watchers.
And like Princess Diana, Ferguson got involved in multiple charities, even setting up several of her own, including one named Sarah’s Trust.
“There were these two twin strands to her money-making,” Lownie said.
“One was to basically be a brand ambassador for anyone who would pay her and often with very close royal links. It was always ‘Her Royal Highness, Duchess of York’, she would actually have things like the ‘Duchess Collection’ of biscuits.
Biscuits and tea promoted by Ferguson as part of the ‘Duchess Collection’. (Facebook/The Duchess Collection)
“She also realised that she could use a position in charities and also to raise money, and this is particularly true in places like the Middle East.”
But by the late 2000s her financial issues were again spiralling out of control and she was facing bankruptcy.
Hartmoor, a US company she set up to deal with her business and charitable activities in America, was forced to fold with debts in the millions.
“There were too many expensive members of staff in expensive accommodation, and the whole thing collapsed,” Lownie said.
Ferguson, seen here in 2006 in her role as global ambassador for Children’s World Day, was involved with dozens of charities. (AP: Elizabeth Dalziel)
“And rather than go bankrupt, which would be very embarrassing, she did sort of vow to pay back some of the creditors, though only a very small percentage of the money they were owed.
“This then made her vulnerable to borrowing money, or actually, more often, just taking money off people. And one of the main people she got money off was Jeffrey Epstein.”
Falling into Epstein’s web
While Ferguson admitted to accepting 15,000 British pounds from the convicted sex offender in March 2011, the UK newspaper Mail on Sunday reported it had seen emails from Epstein claiming to have bankrolled the former duchess for 15 years.
Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who took his own life in prison 2019, gave Sarah Ferguson money. (7.30 Report)
In September this year the same newspaper published an email Ferguson sent to Epstein in April 2011, describing him as a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend”.
“[It] explains why she wrote the grovelling email,” Thompson said.
“You don’t do that sort of thing under normal circumstances, when a man is exposed as a paedophile.
“You distance yourself from him permanently, and there she was grovelling.“
A spokesperson for Ferguson said at the time it was only sent to “assuage Epstein and his threats” in relation to a previous interview she had done distancing herself from him and apologising for taking his money.
The email led to a host of charities cutting links with Ferguson and was the first in a cascade of leaked correspondence between her, Andrew and Epstein that ultimately saw the duke and duchess have their titles removed.
The ABC tried to contact Sarah’s Trust for comment about Ferguson’s role at the organisation but the charity’s email address bounced back and the listed phone number was not connected.
What next for ‘Fergie’?
Despite their 1996 divorce, Ferguson has been living with her ex-husband at the 30-room Royal Lodge on the Windsor Great Park estate since 2003.
Royal Lodge is a large mansion on the estate surrounding Windsor Castle. (Reuters)
But with King Charles stripping Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s royal titles last month and banishing him to Windsor from the end of 2025, Ferguson too will be looking for a new home.
“Sarah Ferguson is the great Houdini — she does escape from these things and bounces back, but it’s difficult to know what’s going to happen,”
Lownie said.
While it is expected Andrew will move to a property on King Charles’s personally owned estate Sandringham, there has been no word on Ferguson’s next movements.
“She doesn’t seem to have any friends, she doesn’t have any money,” Thompson said.
“She really needs her daughters [Beatrice and Eugenie] to do something and to rally around and look after her.
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have retained their royal titles despite their parents becoming commoners. (Instagram/sarahferguson15)
“The prospect of her writing a book would be one the family’s worried about.”
Lownie also thinks the world may not have heard the last of the former duchess.
“I don’t think Sarah Ferguson is going to go quietly,”
he said.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.abc.net.au ’
