Strange as it may seem, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Sarah Ferguson. I’ve met her a few times, and she’s never been anything but friendly, full of beans and generally rather fun.
I felt she got a bit of a bad rap, especially in the beginning. I’m old enough to remember the way she was unfairly and unfavourably compared to Princess Diana, and the cruel nicknames – unthinkable now – used to mock her weight and appearance in the 1990s.
Where Diana was cast as a cool style queen and a fashion icon, feisty, messy Sarah just always seemed to get it wrong.
It must have been miserable for her, and indeed she has spoken in the past about how it made her feel, and the devastating impact it had on her self-esteem and mental health.
I thought that, despite everything, she was fundamentally a decent egg who had had to put up with a lot and had been knocked off course by it all – like so many women in public life.
But these latest revelations, unearthed by The Mail on Sunday, have rather altered my perception of her.
Far from being a bumbling but essentially benign Sloane Ranger, it seems there is another, much darker, side to the duchess.
Sarah Ferguson should not have been front and centre at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral. Indeed, arguably her presence was an insult to the late Duchess, a woman who – unlike the duchess – gave back with sincerity and conviction
These emails, sent either side of her 2011 interview with the Evening Standard newspaper, in which she refutes all association with Jeffrey Epstein, show the duchess’s true colours. And it’s not a pretty picture.
They reveal someone who is not only highly manipulative but also deceitful, self-serving, venal – and oddly devoid of a moral compass.
The contrast between the narrative she presents to her interviewer and the reality of her actions in private is undeniable.
In the article she is contrite, vulnerable, full of emotion, even casting herself as the unwitting innocent.
‘I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me,’ she says. Note the passive phrasing there: ‘became involved’. In other words, not her fault.
She goes on: ‘I had no idea of the string of other allegations and court cases against him, and I am distraught that I should have allowed myself to get out of debt with any help from him when my judgment was clouded.’ Quite the mea culpa.
Yet her emails, written around the same time as that interview, tell a different story. Before the article appeared, in January, she addresses him as ‘My dear dear friend Jeffrey’.
I’m old enough to remember the way she was compared to Princess Diana, and the cruel nicknames used to mock her weight and appearance in the 1990s. Where Diana was cast as a cool style queen and a fashion icon, feisty, messy Sarah just always seemed to get it wrong
Note: not one dear, but two.
Surely, given that they were clearly such close friends, she must have had at least some inkling of the sort of trouble that he was in?
That friendship is underlined. ‘You are a friend indeed and I will one day give it all back to you, but I cannot have the words to thank you now.’ Instead, she offers him her heart, signs off ‘your friend always’.
Now, if one were being devil’s advocate, one might say that those were simply the words of a desperate woman. At the time she owed £5million, and the money that Jeffrey Epstein gave her – brokered via Prince Andrew’s office, to pay off a former employee – removed the obstacle to having her debts consolidated.
Indeed, in her interview she admits: ‘I just did not think this through. I did not see the ramifications I was so intent on being clear of my debt.’
Perhaps Prince Andrew told her to thank him directly by email, and she just did so in her characteristic over-the-top style.
But it’s the subsequent email to Epstein, the one sent after the interview was published, that removes any semblance of doubt and really tells us what kind of person she is.
‘I will never have anything to do with him again. I deeply regret it. ‘How many more times do you want me to underline that?’ she says in the interview, slightly testily.
And yet a month after those very words were published, here she is, not only messaging Epstein but very openly sympathising with his predicament and even, I would suggest, buttering him up.
All while attempting to absolve herself of all responsibility for her actions and casting herself as an unwitting victim.
Sarah in a message to Jeffrey Epstein (pictured) wrote: ‘I was advised, in no uncertain terms, to have nothing to do with you and to not speak or email you’ (again, giving the lie to the notion that Sarah had ‘no idea’ that he was in trouble)
She candidly admits that the only reason she denounced him in the Press was self-preservation.
‘I was advised, in no uncertain terms, to have nothing to do with you and to not speak or email you,’ she writes (again, giving the lie to the notion that she had ‘no idea’ that Epstein was in trouble).
And once more, that passing of the buck: ‘I was advised.’
She doubles down, acting the damsel in distress. ‘I got completely obliterated and I saw all my children’s work disappearing. I did not want to hurt Andrew one more time.’
Jeepers, pass the smelling salts.
And she adds: ‘I was instructed to act with the utmost speed if I would have any chance of holding on to my career as a children’s book author and a children’s philanthropist.’
In other words, if it weren’t for the fact that it might damage her own reputation, she would be perfectly happy being friends with such a man as Epstein.
As she says herself, ‘You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.’
The overall impression is one of a woman who will do or say anything to save her own skin.
There is also a sense that she doesn’t think Epstein has done anything wrong: ‘We are and have both been in the firing line, both blamed for stuff we have not done.’
Bear in mind that this was written over a year after he had been released from prison, having served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution.
Her email makes it clear that she knew of the existence of the accusations. Would she really have been wholly unaware of their nature?
The Duchess of York pictured in 2003 in New York with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime Epstein girlfriend
At the time, her own two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, were barely in their 20s. Did it not cross her mind that if the fates had dealt them a different hand, there but for the grace of God etc…
Or were Epstein’s victims not important enough to warrant such consideration?
From her point of view, she just seems to think that the whole thing is simply ‘hellacious’, a massive personal inconvenience rather than a serious criminal investigation which has far-reaching ramifications.
But then the whole thing stinks of the kind of entitlement that people like Epstein and Prince Andrew embody, that sense that if one has money and status – or both – then the normal rules of human behaviour simply need not apply.
Ferguson’s actions and words show her to be someone who wants all the perks of her position without any of the accountability.
The duchess is someone whose life has been shaped by a series of scandals, all of her own making. This is just the latest, and it comes at a bad time for both her and Prince Andrew.
They thought they could get away with it, and for a while they did.
She clearly thinks she’s back in the fold, if her recent appearance at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral is anything to go by.
But it seems they can’t escape their past – or the cold hand of Epstein from beyond the grave.
Could this be Ferguson’s Newsnight moment, the point when the whole world looks at her and sees her for who she really is, and no amount of good causes or fine words or jolly books about helicopters can save her, because the lying and the double standards are there for all to witness?
It’s possible. Perhaps Princess Margaret was right when, in the wake of the toe-sucking scandal all those years ago, she allegedly returned some flowers that Fergie had sent her, together with a note: ‘How dare you send me flowers. Have you ever considered what damage you have done to the Royal Family?’
If that family has any sense, it will now take decisive steps to keep her at arm’s length.
She should not have been front and centre at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral.
Indeed, arguably her presence was an insult to the late Duchess, a woman who – unlike Sarah Ferguson – gave back with sincerity and conviction.
One final thought. No wonder she and Prince Andrew still get on so well. They are clearly cut from the same cloth. Have any two shameless grifters ever deserved each other more?
