Why cook-along-a-fergie might just be the tonic the world needs
As Sarah, Duchess of York writes a new recipe book, Debora Robertson finds out what’s on the menu
For all of us, this most extraordinary year has forced us to reflect and reinvent ourselves. We have worked out with Joe Wicks, yoga’d with Adriene, perfected our banana bread, decided we hated banana bread, created and killed sourdough starters, done deals from the sofa, turned kitchens into classrooms, Zoomed, groomed our own hair, grown tomatoes, and kept it all together as best we can. Well done everybody, honestly.
Meanwhile, in an unlikely Covid-induced development, it was announced this week that Sarah, Duchess of York is writing a recipe book, to be published next year. It’s a collection of “fun and easy” dishes for the whole family to enjoy (sadly, when it comes to the Royal family, one assumes not all at the same time, in the same room). Still, plucky Sarah is thrilled. Of course she is. Excited is her star sign. She has spent her life being thrilled, just as a Labrador is thrilled when its owner comes back from circumnavigating the globe or going to the post box, whichever is the shorter. Put on a happy face, and smile, smile, smile. God damn it.
Fergie has written 25 books, which is possibly more than she has read. And this is her second cookbook, the first being Dining with the Duchess: Making Everyday Meals a Special Occasion, which she wrote when she was brand ambassador for Weight Watchers, in the Nineties version of on-her-uppers and needing to earn a low-carb crust.
Her new book is the result of a lockdown project, a Youtube channel called Fergie and Friends. While sitting out the plague at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, she needed something to take her mind off, well, everything: a pandemic; a daughter’s rearranged wedding and an ex-husband potentially facing extradition to the States. It’s quite a lot. So what is a duchess to do? In Fergie’s case, reach for the stories and the sprinkles.
On Fergie and Friends, Sarah shares recipes – which will feature in the book – along with stories read by her or friends: her daughters, who disappointingly don’t display their mother’s penchant for dressing up, or Cressida Bonas, Sam Branson, Stephen Fry, Beverley Knight, Natalie Imbruglia. It’s quite the wholesome crowd.
On clear days, Sarah bobs around Windsor Great Park dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, popping up from behind blue hydrangeas or beneath a beribboned tree. On inclement days, she is confined to a conservatory embellished with fake apple blossom and union flag cushions, the sort of posh gimcrackery that makes you feel that just out of shot are garden signs (“I find gardening so exciting that I wet my plants”; “Life’s a garden. Dig it!”– you know the sort of thing).
Fergie is not afraid of a wig or a garland or any other embellishment and has more soft toys at her disposal than Hamleys. She launches into Goldilocks in blonde plaits, Dinosaurs Love Underpants in a beige bush hat, and Aladdin in a coronet of daisies.
In addition to the stories, she rustles up peanut butter and banana toasts in the shape of teddy bears, chocolatecovered strawberries in tiny terracotta pots as a tribute to Peter Rabbit, and marshmallow tea pots, because why not? Treasure chest “yum stacks” are formed clumsily from chocolate rolls, Haribo rings and Smarties. Sausage meat is smooshed into bought pastry and rolled up into “snails”. It is all delivered in a chaotic, slightly breathless, oh-well-that-will-haveto-do fashion. Important not to look as though you have rehearsed.
Famously, Fergie and Prince Andrew were set up by Diana, Princess of Wales at an Ascot lunch where they launched profiteroles at each other, in a traditional mating ritual of the upper classes, one step up from pulling ponytails. The rest of us have to put up with strategically ignoring each other until marriage becomes inevitable.
Traditionally, the upper classes have viewed an interest in food as highly suspicious and not quite PLU. (Their children and grandchildren all run artisanal foraging companies and fork-to-table restaurants, but that is beside the point.) Ridicule and jokes, however, were always acceptable. Which is how we have a 60-year-old duchess making three little pigs cupcakes, chocolate teddy cars and pepper trains, having the time of her life and capturing the heart of the camp nation. When all is grim outside, put on a happy (banana) face, sling on a garland, and sprinkle on some space dust. That will have to do.