Fergie: Truth about my life with Andrew
Her weight issues. Her complex personal life. Eugenie’s wedding – and THAT remarriage gossip. In her first full interview for 20 years, Fergie at her most gloriously candid
OnLY the coldest of hearts could fail to warm to Sarah, duchess of York. dotty and generous, she is bursting with energy and child-like joie de vivre.
‘Oh, I am in every way a child,’ she agrees, in that ‘posh but not plummy’ voice we remember so well from when she first burst into the Royal Family like a flamed-haired wrecking ball in the 1980s.
‘It’s who I am. It gets me into endless trouble. People think you’re impossible or difficult if they can’t relate to you, if you don’t take life seriously. But the key to me is that I look at life with a child’s sense of excitement and joy.’
doesn’t she just. Who didn’t fall in love with her all over again (while holding a nervous hand over our eyes) watching her at her younger daughter Princess Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank last month. There she was, breaking with protocol yet again to hug well-wishers in the crowd before entering St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
And flumping down in her pew — mouthing to Princess Beatrice that she couldn’t hold her tummy in any longer — before waving and beaming at friends in the congregation.
That beam told us that Fergie is back, her sense of mischief and fun undimmed: enveloped again in the public embrace, reconciled with the Royal Family after years in the wilderness.
Last week, I spent two days with her and this unprecedented interview and rare access — the most extensive in decades — gave me a singular insight into her character.
She speaks about her divorce from the Prince, which continues to baffle and fascinate 22 years after they stopped being man and wife — ‘We’re the happiest divorced couple in the world. We’re divorced to each other, not from each other.’
She describes, with magnanimity, those wilderness years which left her in the surreal situation of having to watch her own daughters on TV every Christmas, as they joined the Royals at Sandringham, while she remained banned.
‘I will watch Ben-Hur and really enjoy it, then watch the news and see how the girls are doing.’
And of course, she shares with me the thrill every mother- ofthe-bride feels as she watches a daughter marry. She’s still fizzing with excitement.
‘I always went to weddings and thought: “Why is the mother- ofthe-bride crying?”’ she tells me. ‘But I completely understand why now. It’s because it’s so amazing to think your daughter is now grown up, leaving home and starting her own life.’
‘I’d just sat down in the chapel and everyone saw me go “Phew” because I’d managed not to slip over in my high heels; then I looked across and saw my sister (Jane) and I watched her face and there were tears — and I’m doing it again, I’m welling up now,’ she says, dabbing at her eyes with a polka-dot hankie.
now in her 60th year, her natural Titian red hair is untouched by grey, her stunning legs still slender as a gazelle’s — and her endearing eccentricities unstifled by years of inhibiting royal protocol. Sarah Ferguson remains magnificently, unapologetically, herself.
The wedding, on October 12, was a day of extravagant celebration in which every carriage disgorged an eminent guest or a celebrity, and absent loved-ones — prime among them the late Princess diana — were at the forefront of the duchess’s mind.
‘I thought of absent friends and family; of diana — but she’s with me all the time. What I miss most is her tinkling laughter.
‘diana was my best friend and the funniest person I knew. She had such timing and wit. It was a total joy to be with her because we just laughed and enjoyed life so much, and I know she would have loved the wedding.’
Heading the panoply of senior royals were the Queen and duke of Edinburgh, who attends events on a ‘see how he feels on the day’ basis now, and was in close proximity with his former daughter-in-law for the first time in 25 years.
It was said he couldn’t stand to be in the same room after Fergie ‘ brought shame’ on the Royal Family with those infamous photos of her having her toes sucked by American businessman John Bryan, in the summer of 1992, while separated from Prince Andrew.
But the duchess’s gaze, of course, was fixed firmly on her daughter.
‘My proudest moment,’ she says, ‘was watching Eugenie standing tall, very proud to show her scoliosis scar in her low-backed dress. I’d gone to all the fittings and sat there beaming with delight, and because there was no veil it was a very strong statement.
‘We rang St George’s Chapel to make sure there wasn’t a special rule specifying veils must be worn, but there wasn’t and Eugenie just wanted to be herself.
‘ The tiara ( borrowed from granny) danced to her. She was just so radiant. She said: “Mum, I thought I was going to get nerves,” but she didn’t.
‘She and Jack are just meant to be. He adores her, and now I’ve got a son. Jack is like Zebedee. Boing, boing!’ She demonstrates the energy of the Magic Roundabout character on his coiled spring.
‘He will be the best consort there is, as Prince Albert was to Queen Victoria. I know it will be that sort of love match.’
There were many private moments in the chapel, the duchess admits, when her eyes blurred with tears, and there were subtle ways in which she carried the spirit of loved ones with her.
HER father always encouraged her to think of the backroom staff. ‘ He said: “Remember the kitchen is more important than the dining table” so I made sure the chauffeurs’ tent had lots of nice notes, coffees and biscuits, and I put my father’s photo up as I knew he’d be saying, “Well done”.’
Major Ronald Ferguson died in 2003 and his first wife Susan — Fergie’s mother — was killed in 1998, aged 61, in a car crash in Argentina, where she lived with her second husband, polo player Hector Barrantes.
The vintage Manolo Blahnik bag Fergie held at the wedding belonged to her mother.
‘Mum had carried the handbag at my wedding to Prince Andrew and the admission tickets were still in it. They were green — which was why I wore green on the day.’ And the elderly woman in a wheelchair whom Sarah embraced in the crowd outside the chapel, was her mother’s friend, Jessie Huberty.
‘I’d gone to live with her in new York for six weeks when I was 19. My father had said, “You’re too spoilt. You have to work your way round America” — so I stayed with Jessie and got a job cleaning lavatories to earn enough to get a Greyhound bus ticket.’
Standing near Jessie was nepalese Sherpa Gyalzen (Sarah also hugged him warmly), with whom she had climbed beyond Everest base camp in 2000 for the MacIntyre charity, which supports people with learning disabilities.
The sherpa, who worked for the duchess for a few years after this, now lives in new York with his wife and son, and had travelled to Windsor specially to witness Princess Eugenie’s big day.
For the party at Royal Lodge on the Saturday, where food was served from a series of stalls, each dish was chosen for its special significance to the newlyweds and their families. There was Argentinean beef — in memory of Susan Barrantes — rice dishes from nicaragua (where Jack had proposed in front of a volcano), mini hamburgers from the U.S. where Eugenie’s employer, art gallery Hauser & Wirth is based.
There was Italian pizza and Spanish paella, while crepes from Switzerland represented Verbier, where the duke and duchess jointly own a £13 million chalet.
The couple’s friends Ellie Goulding and Robbie Williams — who was there with his wife Ayda Field (their daughter Theodora,
six, was a bridesmaid) — both sang their hits. And the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra also performed, its programme including a composition, Twin Flame, by singer-songwriter Tanis Chalopin, written as a wedding present for the couple.
Critics have carped about the extravagance of the wedding — but of course the bride and groom’s families met those costs. As is standard at any gathering attended by the Queen, security costs fell to the taxpayer — as they did for Her Majesty’s other grandchildren’s weddings.
And there in the middle of it all was Fergie, centre stage after years of painful alienation. Today, her rehabilitation seems complete.
For three successive summers she has been to Balmoral; she Beaming: Fergie today and at the heart of the Royal Family for Eugenie’s wedding regularly joins the Queen at Ascot and shares tea with Her Majesty at Windsor. And, of course, all the senior members of the Royal Family (Prince Philip prime among them) mustered for the wedding. Only Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was absent, honouring a longstanding promise to visit a tiny school in Scotland. Was Sarah offended? Not a whit! ‘I think it’s wonderful she kept to her engagement, especially as it was with children. She’s a wonderful lady and was a great friend of my mum,’ she says magnanimously. And throughout the vicissitudes of the past two decades, her closeness to the Duke of York has remained unassailable. They share a home — Royal Lodge, Windsor — and have raised their well-adjusted daughters as a partnership. I ask if she loves him. It seems the Fergie of 2018 has learned diplomacy and deftly side- steps the question, but replies: ‘ We both say it. We are completely compatible. Our bywords are communication, compromise and compassion.
‘July 23, 1986 was the happiest day of my life. Andrew is the best man I know. What he does for Britain is incredible; no one knows how hard he works for his country.
‘My duty is to him. I am so proud of him. I stand by him and always will. The way we are our fairy tale.
‘Although we are not a couple, we really believe in each other. The Yorks are a united family. We’ve shown it. You saw it at the wedding.
‘We stand up for each other, fight for each other. We’re totally respectful of each other’s position and thoughts and we listen to each other. Our children listen to us, too.
‘And we sit round the table and have afternoon tea together. It’s a very important part of our lives.’
The question has been raised many times: will they remarry? ‘So many people have asked me that, but we’re so happy with the way we are right now,’ she says. ‘We enjoy each other’s company; we allow each other to
... DIETING I know what it’s like to be destroyed by self -hatred – because when you comfort eat, you put on weight and then beat yourself up ... LOVE FOR ANDREW We both say it. I married the finest man, the best father and the best-looking prince ...DIANA
She’s with me all the time. I miss her tinkling laughter – she was my best friend and the funniest person I knew ...HER PARENTS’ DIVORCE
I found out in 1974 through a newspaper. I remember thinking I was responsible – because I wasn’t good enough