No sweat! The British media’s collusion with Fergie’s PR rehabilitation is less believable than her ex-husband’s excuses...
No sweat! The British media’s collusion with Fergie’s PR rehabilitation is less believable than her ex-husband’s excuses...
She’s not a living piece of nostalgia. She’s the woman who took £15,000 from Jeffrey Epstein
Though death has been no impediment to the British press in writing about Princess Diana — indeed, The Daily Express has turned to psychics to get her views on the news of the day — the other iconic tabloid princess of the 80s, Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, is still with us and entering the “living object of nostalgia” stage of her career.
With a new book out, her first for adults via Mills & Boon, Fergie has been all over the media this week. Predictably her ‘Lunch With The FT’ provoked more shares on social media than The Daily Mail’s extract of Her Heart for a Compass. The meal, written up by Henry Mance with a mix of scorn and sympathy, hits the soft spot of a lot of people on Twitter — a respectable enough publication for the sharer to seem smart coupled with a camp enough subject for them to seem fun.
The praise for Mance flowed because people judged him to have extracted the comedy from the interview without slipping over into abject cruelty and he did raise the dead and diseased elephant in the room — Jeffrey Epstein. But I found the piece closer to Boris Johnson gulling The Atlantic’s Tom McTague than the masterful dissection that so many on Twitter seemed to read.
Early on in the piece, Ferguson gets Mance with one of the oldest tricks in the book — flattering your interviewer by revealing you’ve been reading about them. It’s an absolute route one bit of media training — a judo flip to soften up your interrogator by appealing to their ego — and Mance seems to have fallen for it:
I’ve read every single one of your interviews,” she continues, shortly before commenting on the personality of my mother. I did not expect the Duchess of York to be the first interviewee to prepare more for lunch than I had.
Of course, Ferguson, who is far wilier than her wild-eyed schtick suggests, knew what Mance would expect and set out to both deliver it and lead him to conclude that at least some of his preconceptions were wrong. Royalty’s an act and Fergie has managed to stay in the monarchy’s company of players by knowing that.
The first mention of Jeffrey Epstein occurs during Mance’s scene-setting:
At one stage, she borrowed £15,000 from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to pay back her assistant. That “gigantic error of judgment” casts a long shadow, worsened by Andrew’s disastrous attempt to explain his friendship with Epstein in a BBC interview. But now, amid daily headlines about the future of the royal family, Ferguson is trying to bounce back. This month, she launches her first novel for adults, Her Heart for a Compass.
This is enormously sympathetic framing. In 2011, when it emerged that Epstein had paid £15,000 directly to Ferguson’s former assistant Johnny O’Sullivan apparently to allow a wider restructuring of her then £5 million debts to occur, she did say — in an exclusive soft-soap interview with The Evening Standard’s Geordie Greig1 that she had made “a terrible, terrible error of judgement”.
But she went on to say that Prince Andrew, who had “sorted out” her debts and with whom she still lives at the Royal Lodge, was “a man who does not know how to tell an untruth or behave dishonourably.” We do not know if Fergie sweated when she said that but Andrew’s 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis revealed just how hollow her words were. She stands by him because it also ensures proximity to his bank account and the other trappings of royalty.
Mance mentions a scandal all of Ferguson’s own that came before the Epstein revelation…
In 2010, she was filmed in a News of the World sting accepting cash in return for access to Andrew. It was a “major trauma”, she recalls. Among the few to stand by her was Andrew, her ex-husband.
… but again, it’s a glancing look at a very deep and dark cesspit. It’s common for old lags to agree on a story and stick to it.
When, discussing her divorce from Prince Andrew and their close ‘friendship’, Fergie says, “I want him to come through this. I want him to win…” Mance sees his chance to explore the Epstein connection further. It feels as staged as a wrestler retrieving a steel chair from beneath the ring during a WWE bout. He swings for her, she parries, he writes about the charged atmosphere and the job is done — Epstein mentioned, controversy covered, on with the Mills & Boon.
Having pressed her on Andrew, royal duties, and whether the Maitlis interview was a bad idea and having had her, in turn, “stare javelins” at him and try to shift the conversation onto whether salad should come in bowls and how long it is since she had bread, Mance writes:
The atmosphere is now cooler than the pink champagne. Suddenly I realise how fragile Ferguson is; how supporting Andrew is not an act of foolishness, so much as the rational response to a lifetime of loss.
Again, look at how he stretches to find excuses for her. A woman without the unearned privilege of a princess would not be given so many second chances and so many flimsy excuses. The piece continues with Ferguson saying:
If I hadn’t married a prince, I would be doing exactly what I’m doing now . . . It’s this feeling. It makes me happy.
And Mance, with the profile writer’s cursed need for a conclusion, writes:
It strikes me that, all at once, Ferguson is waving, and drowning, and trying to swim to the rescue.
It can’t be that she is simply an opportunistic person who, having spent so long in luxury, will do pretty much anything to ensure that luxury continues? No, of course not, because the storied Financial Times would never speak to such a void, would they?
There is an argument that Mance has simply allowed Ferguson to hang herself with her own rope. He and his editors run long quotes from her in which she burbles on about why “cancel culture is a major problem” (I’d argue that Prince Andrew won’t be cancelled enough until he appears in an orange jumpsuit) and her belief that she is “a very chameleon adapter to whatever situation I’m in”. But his piece is also very sympathetic to her and the problem is that it exists at all.
Persuading us to empathise with them is one of modern royalty’s biggest tricks. Sarah Ferguson’s years of financial mismanagement made her an easy mark for people trying to get to Prince Andrew during his less-than-spotless run as a British trade envoy; a job that mainly seemed to involve him getting the taxpayer to pay for his jollies hanging out with horrendous individuals of all kinds from despots to arms dealers to Jeffrey Epstein.
Granted the News of the World sting was perpetrated by ‘the fake sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood, who was jailed for 15 months in 2016 for conspiring to pervert the course of justice, but the Fergie caught on tape was quite different to the bumbling caricature that turned up to woo Mance.
Ferguson told the reporter, who was posing as a wealthy businessman, that their £500,000 deal would “[open] up everything you would ever wish for” and promised that she could “open any door you want”. The News of the World piece claimed to have details of “two tycoons” — such a tabloid word — who Ferguson said she had already introduced to Prince Andrew and that she had demanded a cut of any profits coming from these introductions.
Prince Andrew’s spokesperson “categorically [denied] any knowledge of any meeting” and Ferguson issued a statement in which she apologised for “a serious lapse of judgement” and said her financial situation was “under stress”. Isn’t it interesting how many lapses of judgement you’re allowed when you’re rich? The rest of us would be lucky to be allowed one. Prince Andrew has been excused so many that he was able to become the top Yelp! reviewer for Jeffrey Epstein’s houses and to build up hundreds of Jeff’s ‘special’ air miles. I believe they entitled customers to a free massage…
On Thursday, Ferguson was given the prime spot on Radio 4’s Front Row to hawk her novel, a privilege unlikely to be given to any other debut novelist whose book had shall we say ‘mixed’ reviews. Like Mance, the Front Row interview noted that Ferguson made use of a co-writer (“a Mills & Boon stalwart, pen name Marguerite Kaye…”) but still allowed Ferguson to say things like “every single line came from my own heart” and “I’m very much a director rather than an actual scribe” without adequate correction.
The interviewer Nick Ahad offered up a string of softball questions interspersed with “wows”, before addressing the Andrew in the room by saying:
The Me Too moment has impacted on your own family and I wonder if that association might affect how the book or that message of a powerful woman at the heart of it will be received.
It was the most cowardly way of approaching the issue and a framing I suspect was agreed with Fergie’s PR people before the interview was confirmed. She has only been ‘impacted’ in so much as it made it harder for her to flog things and for her ex-husband to strut about the place so arrogantly. He remains rich, free, and unquestioned by American law enforcement agencies.
Ferguson’s answer to Ahad’s question was equally as empty and oblique:
I think people are entitled to make their own mind [sic] up. I think I have led by example in the way of steadfastness and loyalty to what I believe is right. I brought my girls up to believe in the mission statement I always said, ‘No race, creed, colour, or any other denomination, no borders for suffering, no egos…’ and I stand by that.
I doubt the girls who suffered horrific things at the hands of Prince Andrew’s friend Jeffrey Epstein will find any comfort in that.
Ahad decided, as Mance did, to “switch to safer territory” and turned to the comfortable nostalgia of Ferguson’s wedding to Andrew, prompting her to talk about ‘Fergie’ in the third person once again:
Ah yes, good Fergie sold a lot of papers that day — the 23rd July 1986 — probably because the whole nation got a day off. I believe in life that people can make judgements but if you can keep your own self on a straight line and not dip into the misunderstanding or trying to sell yourself or trying to prove yourself, and just be yourself, eventually you realise it’s really very exciting to be who you wish to be.
Diana was my very best friend from when I was… she was 14, I was 16 when I met her and we were so close. We were very lucky to not let newspaper sales come in the way of our friendship.
Naturally, that led to a discussion of the tabloids:
When you have the front page that says “82% would rather sleep with a goat than Fergie” it is very demoralising or what about “the Duchess of Pork”? That was a good one. It took ten years with me with real mental problems over the fact that he thought I was very fat so he called me the ‘Duchess of Pork’…
When I eventually met the man who wrote it, I met him at a big lunch… the man in the corner was smiling, he was quite small, rather round, with a bald head. I went up to him and said, “You’re having a nice time. Have you been here at this newspaper for a long time?”
And he said, “Oh yes, Fergie — you and I are legends. I am so excited to meet you because I was the one who came up with that title the Duchess of Pork!”
… I had believed my critics. I had believed him so much that he was the cause of my demise into a big problem with food. And yet he didn’t mean it. It was just to sell papers.
Ferguson has been subjected to disgusting coverage about her weight and body ever since she entered the public eye. A Washington Post story from 1986 captures the moment even her waxwork got a tabloid once over:
When her wax double was unveiled here Thursday at Madame Tussaud's, an enterprising photographer jumped across the barriers and quickly wrapped a measuring tape around its hips.
The famous wax figures are supposed to be made to exact measurements, and the media waited breathlessly for confirmation on a subject of intense public speculation.
"Forty-two inches," the photographer shouted. He apparently didn't have the nerve to wrap the tape around Fergie's top, a subject of similarly widespread interest.
Fergie has turned the issue to her advantage as a paid spokesperson for Weight Watchers since 1997 and the tale of the horrific survey and the equally horrendous Duchess of Pork jibe comes out whenever she does a round of press. It’s the old reliable that’s re-reported as a new revelation every time.
In fact, Ferguson has talked about the goat poll so much that it’s hard to find the original source. However, Rosalind Gill references it in her book Gender and the Media (2007), which in turn references Bob Franklin’s book Newszak and News Media (1997)2. Gill writes:
Sarah Ferguson, former wife of Britain’s Prince Andrew, has also been the target of a barrage of press hostility about her appearance; notoriously The Sun newspaper set up a telephone poll inviting male readers to vote for ‘who you would rather date … Fergie or a goat?’
Last year, Fergie wrote a piece in the very same Sun about her relationship to food and weight loss which the paper gave the sensitive headline I found consolation in sausages after parents’ divorce but I won my weight battle and can help fix UK obesity crisis.
The identity of the rotund rotter who wrote the ‘Duchess of Pork’ line — probably first used by The News of the World — remains a mystery but you can be sure that Fergie will reuse the anecdote when she’s back with her second Mills & Boon book to sell.
What she won’t be so willing to talk about are the women who are victims not of the tabloids but of her beloved ex-husband’s dear departed pal Mr Epstein. And that’s what makes the British media’s willingness to give her space, time, and attention so utterly loathsome.
‘Fergie’ is a front and the woman behind it — Sarah Ferguson — is willing to defend and excuse almost anything to stay cosy with the royals and keep the gravy train chugging along. Interviewers like Mance and Ahad do little more than make themselves co-conspirators.
Greig is now editor of The Daily Mail and also offered a softball interview to Ferguson when he was editor of Tatler. That his twin sister was a Lady-in-waiting for Princess Diana probably might just have something to do with it.
Thanks to Dr Kate Devlin for her research assistance in digging this up.