Fergie’s toe-sucking lover finally breaks his silence... after 30 years
Businessman John Bryan was twice smuggled into Royal Lodge to tackle the fallout from sex abuse scandal
PRINCE ANDREW held secret crisis talks with his ex-wife’s ‘toe-sucking’ lover following the disastrous Newsnight interview about his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Mail on Sunday can today reveal the astonishing story of how US businessman John Bryan – the man at the heart of Sarah Ferguson’s 1992 scandal – gave the Duke ‘honest advice’ as his life fell apart following the bombshell broadcast in 2019.
In his first-ever interview, Mr Bryan, a respected financial adviser, revealed how he rallied behind the Yorks to offer strategic advice about restoring the Duke’s shattered reputation and finances after he was forced to step away from royal duties.
Breaking three decades of silence, the 67-year-old told this newspaper how:
● He was ‘smuggled’ into Andrew’s home at Royal Lodge, Windsor, during a ‘cloak-and-dagger’ operation to conceal his identity;
● Furious Andrew ‘ranted and raved’ and shouted: ‘I don’t care any more’ after the Queen banished him from the Royal Family;
● Distraught Princess Beatrice told her father: ‘You’ve hurt our family’;
● A plan was hatched to turn Andrew’s £18million Swiss chalet into a private club charging members £1.2million a year for ‘access to the Royals’;
● He and Fergie had a romantic relationship for four years in the 1990s and have remained friends for 30 years;
● The notorious toe-sucking story was a ‘fabrication’. Mr Bryan told how he was ‘stunned’ to be invited back into the Royal fold in November 2019 when Andrew was at his most vulnerable.
The Duke was reeling from the backlash from his ‘car crash’ interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis and still faced hugely damaging accusations of having had sex with Virginia Roberts, now Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, which the Duke has repeatedly and strenuously denied.
‘Sarah asked me to come and help Andrew and the girls,’ Mr Bryan said.
‘I’d stayed friends with Sarah, but when everything was going down, when it was bad, she reached out to me and I was happy to help.’
Mr Bryan made plans with Sarah to visit Royal Lodge on Saturday, November 30, 2019 – just ten days after the Queen had suspended the Duke from his Royal duties and effectively banished him from the family.
‘Andrew’s television interview had been a catastrophe so they needed an honest strategic plan that everyone could buy into,’ Mr Bryan said last night. ‘Sarah and I were communicating a lot, I was saying, “I hope you’re OK” – the normal things you say to an ex. ‘She invited me to come over. She was desperate. She told me that Andrew was in terrible shape. ‘He was distraught. They were distraught.
‘She reached out to me because that’s what I do. I reconstruct failed businesses, I reconstruct people, I rebuild families.
‘It was intense because I had to get into their place and there were paparazzi everywhere.’
The Epstein sex abuse scandal was not the only pressure the family faced. In 2014 the Duke and Duchess had bought a luxury ski chalet in Verbier, Switzerland, for around £18 million from French socialite Isabelle de Rouvre. They took out a mortgage of £13.25million, agreeing to pay the remaining £5 million in cash instalments, with interest.
By 2019, however, the couple were struggling to make the repayments and Mr Bryan revealed Fergie asked for help to get them out of their financial mire.
He caught a train to Woking station before taking a taxi to Coworth Park, the five-star hotel in Ascot where Prince Harry stayed the night before his wedding. He was met by one of Andrew’s most trusted drivers in a luxury Range Rover with blacked-out windows who took him to Royal Lodge.
After entering the building via a ‘secret entrance’ to avoid press photographers, Mr Bryan was immediately embraced by Sarah.
‘I walked into the house and there was Sarah. We hugged. It was really sweet. I think she cried and I did too. It was wonderful to see her again but she was under intolerable strain. We went outside and had a little walk and we were laughing. I was trying to make her feel better, I was being a bit silly, trying to lighten the atmosphere.’
Mr Bryan agreed to help the family draw up a ‘long term strategy’, which he dubbed ‘House of Kroy’ – turning around the word ‘York’. At the heart of his blueprint was the need to persuade Andrew that he must display sympathy for Epstein’s victims and show that he understood the magnitude of the paedophile’s horrific crimes.
The following day, Sarah invited Mr Bryan to Royal Lodge for a second time. Mr Bryan took a convoluted route, taking two trains and a taxi before the same driver picked him up from a secret location.
‘I was paranoid about anyone finding out I was there,’ he explained. ‘Can you imagine what the reaction would have been like? This was at the height of the scandal around the Newsnight interview. It was cloakand-dagger stuff. Eventually, I was driven into Royal Lodge via a neighbouring property.’
This time Andrew was present, as well as Princess Beatrice and her fiance – now husband – Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank.
‘When I saw Andrew again he gave me a handshake and a hug. We always got along well. When I was with Sarah he knew I was good to his girls.
‘We always liked each other. I was always the outsider on the inside, a position I feel so privileged to have enjoyed.’
The Duke was ‘very upset’ and ‘looked tired and downcast’, Mr Bryan said. ‘He was shouting, “I don’t care any more, I don’t care. I am being treated unfairly.”
‘In the four years I dated Sarah I never once heard him raise his
‘I was paranoid anyone might find out about this’
voice or lose his temper. It showed what strain he was under, how much he cared about the damage this was doing to the Royal Family.
‘There were other advisers there, other PR people who were lining up to give him advice. I told him, “You may think you’ve been treated unfairly but you should never, ever say in front of third parties that you don’t care any more.”’
Beatrice was also ‘hugely distressed’ and, according to Mr Bryan, told her father: ‘You’ve hurt our family.’
Mr Bryan became emotional as he spoke about reuniting with the Princesses, who he had last seen as little girls.
‘We hugged and cried and I told them how proud I am of the remarkable young women they have become,’ he said with tears in his eyes. ‘I’ve never had children of my own but considered myself like a stepfather to those girls. I adored them, I still do. They are my little superheroes. They have grown into such strong women.
‘I sat there with the whole family over lunch and told them, “You are in the middle of a catastrophe and from here it gets a million times worse.” I said we are going to do a strategic plan to turn around the House of York. Andrew was so distressed he wasn’t able to focus for more than 40 minutes. I was blown away by how much pain he was in. And how much suffering he was enduring. It was very real.’
Mr Bryan said he remains convinced of the Duke’s innocence.
He said: ‘I saw many of his girlfriends during my relationship with Sarah and never, not once, did he turn up with a woman who was not in her mid-20s.
‘I truly believe if there was anything untoward going on I would have known about it, Sarah would have known about it. But there was never a hint of that. I remain and will always remain an outsider, so let me be the first outsider to say that I believe Prince Andrew – and I don’t say it lightly. This outsider has a lot of inside knowledge.’
He remains sympathetic to Ms Giuffre and all of Epstein’s victims: ‘They are the real victims in all of this. But the legal system in America, the teams of lawyers, encourage victims to boost their stories.
‘These poor victims get abused constantly; once by the perpetrators and again by the court system and then the media makes them into a circus act. It’s an endless circle of abuse and I feel so deeply their pain and suffering.’
Mr Bryan added that he believes Ms Giuffre may have met the Duke but wondered if she had been ‘mistaken’ in elements of her story. He mentioned a recent legal settlement in which Ms Giuffre admitted ‘I may have made a mistake’ in naming lawyer Alan Dershowitz as someone who abused her.
Mr Bryan, who has been involved in dozens of bankruptcy and restructuring cases in his 30-year career said: ‘I produced a five-page strategic planning document and wanted to create a mission for the House of York: how are we going to recover from this and what needs to be done legally and PR-wise?’
Mr Bryan advised the Duke on what to say to Prince Charles ahead of a critical meeting about his future. ‘I asked him, “What are your objectives with your brother? You need to keep it very simple. The narrative should be: Sadly, a lot of us got caught up in this and made a terrible mistake. Epstein enticed me into this but he enticed a lot of people… credible people are taken in by his scandalous extortion plot and part of me feels furious and part of me feels terrible for the victims”.’
Last month The Mail on Sunday revealed how at a subsequent meeting between the two brothers, just
‘I believe Andrew, and I have inside knowledge’
days before the Queen’s death, Andrew was left ‘tearful’ after Charles made clear he would never return to Royal duties.
Mr Bryan said the Yorks heaped praise on his plan and were grateful for his support as they desperately tried to weather the storm.
Ultimately, however, Prince Andrew did not follow his blueprint. ‘He was distracted back into the system which has often failed him and so many others,’ Mr Bryan said.
The following day, as Mr Bryan flew home to the US, the scandal deepened further when the BBC broadcast an interview with Ms Giuffre in which she described how she was ‘grossed out’ by dancing with Prince Andrew in a London nightclub and felt sick at realising she was expected to have sex with him at the age of 17.
Mr Bryan said Sarah immediately messaged him, pouring scorn on the claims.
Despite the Yorks deciding not to follow his plan, Mr Bryan heard from Sarah as recently as earlier this month. ‘I love her and the girls. I wish them nothing but the best. I believe the House of York will weather this storm and turn this around,’ he said. ‘Beatrice and Eugenie are the face of the next generation and I believe they will be the ones who will help their family recover and flourish.’
The Duke and Duchess of York declined to comment last night.