Revisited: Sarah Ferguson: Debts, deceit and the downfall of a duchess

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Over 2025, every Friday, the Sky News Daily has been profiling a figure in the news, those who are making headlines, creating conversations. So during the festive period, we are revisiting some of those standout profiles, the ones that really got us talking. Back in October, the royal previously known as Prince Andrew lost his titles over his association with convicted paedophile Geoffrey Epstein. His ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, was also in Epstein's network and she was dropped as a patron of several charities at the time. But it wasn't the first occasion Sarah, Duchess of York, had caused the royal family a headache.

0:43We've explored the impact of that moment Andrew finally fell from grace and what it means for the royals in 2026. You just need to scroll back a few episodes to find that. But for now, here's our return to Sarah Ferguson. debts, deceit and the downfall of a duchess.

1:06Hi everyone, Neil Patterson back with The Daily, where at the end of every week we like to profile someone who's been in the news. This week is no exception. Hello, here we are in Peru, Pacific Ocean, Pacific Ocean, right there. Look, look, look. That is, of course, ex-wife of Prince Andrew and one-time friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Hello from Austria, from Alto Asi. Very, very happy New Year to you all. She was once best known as a bit of a party girl, bubbly and vivacious. She really was a breath of fresh air in the rather musty House of Windsor. But she was cast out following her divorce and had to find ways of standing on her own two feet.

1:49Hi, it's very exciting. So it's competition time. You have to listen to this. If you go on at Sarah Ferguson 15. So, something of a pioneer when it came to monetising royalty. But she did also throw herself into charity work. What I feel about Teenage Cancer Trust is that if there are seven young adults diagnosed on a daily basis in this country alone, then we've got to talk about it. And look, ultimately, it's that charitable work that's prompted today's podcast. Well, actually, let's be clear, it's the lack of it. She's been dumped as patron by a number of charities. After it emerged, she sent convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein an email of support, after not only his conviction, but also a very public condemnation of the billionaire.

2:37And, just like her husband, she now faces exile and humiliation. So, just who is Sarah Ferguson? Who better to ask than Andrew Lowney, author of Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York? Andrew, look, clearly she married into royalty, but hers was already a privileged upbringing, wasn't it? Andrew, she's a descendant indeed of Charles II. She mixed in royal circles from a very early age. Her father was the polo manager to King Charles. But in some ways rather sad, because her mother basically left the family when Sarah was 13 to go off with an Argentinian polo player and she was brought up by her father and i think you can trace this this strong sense of inferiority her desire to please uh her extravagance her generosity which comes from this desire to make friends so when did fergie and prince andrew first enter each other's orbit then i mean there's certainly a picture of them were aged seven or eight had a polo match you know they went off to morning school and then they were brought together much later in 1985 when And Diana, who was a friend of both of them, thought they would get on well and invited Sarah to come to Ascot.

3:50And basically, she kind of pushed the relationship with Andrew. And actually, it worked very well. Actually, Andrew courted her in a very traditional way with flowers and visits the theatre and things. So in some ways, it was a great love story. The wedding was viewed by millions on television. I mean, there were very enthusiastic crowds watching them. It was a very happy occasion. and so in some ways it's very poignant to see those scenes of them cupping their ears and asking the crowd if they should kiss. Welcomed by the public, behind closed doors though, were the royal family quite as welcoming to Fergie?

4:23No, I think the royal family had their reservations. She had a reputation for being a bit of a party girl. There were concerns about her father. There were concerns whether she was really in love with Andrew, in love with the royal family. Lots of questions around the marriage behind the scenes. The Queen thought that she He couldn't stop talking and was slightly nervous about her new daughter-in-law. But they shared an interest in dogs, horses and charades, and that's always a good start in the royal family. The honeymoon was over pretty quickly, wasn't it? Not just with Andrew, but also the press.

4:56She certainly wasn't helped by the backlash over that infamous appearance on It's a Royal Knockout. For those who don't know, it was a sort of 80s version of the TV show Ninja Warrior. I mean, things did change. I would say within a year or two years of the marriage, we had It's a Royal Knockout. People, the press sort of turned on her, felt that she was getting fat, that she was looking for freebie holidays. And suddenly her sort of rather natural charm seemed a little vulgar. When you look at that kind of early period of her time within the royal family, she did take to it. She was certainly not overawed by the occasion, was she?

5:32Yeah. No, she's very confident, charismatic figure. And she, you know, she loved the, at least publicly, she loved the wedding. I mean, she, that she in fact wrote later in an autobiography that, you know, she felt slightly uncomfortable that, you know, all the attention was focused on him rather than her as the bride. But, you know, she was a very confident person. And I think she, you know, she felt she could, she could cope with this. I mean, she loved all the sort of pomp and ceremony and the attention. And in some ways, that was a problem. She got sort of swept up with it. And I think the problem was no one really held her to account.

6:08And as a result, you know, he wasn't held to account either for his actions. Give me some examples of that, because Sarah Ferguson certainly gave the impression of being, as you say, incredibly charming, life and soul, interesting, bubbly, vivacious, but not necessarily someone who was willing to push the boundaries of what was acceptable within the royal family. You know, in some ways she was trying to push. She was a disruptor like Meghan Markle. I mean, she felt that, you know, the rules didn't apply to her. And that's where the tensions began with palace officials. But there were a whole series of problems.

6:44I mean, she began to take advantage of her position. She became less popular, not just with the press, but with the palace staff. She would go off on trips with charity she was involved in, but would stay much longer than she was supposed to. She would go and stay with people. She would have staff there and require them to be on hand. And then at the last minute, having cooked meals for her, she would decide to go to a restaurant, for example. she would come back late at night from parties and expect the staff to rustle up a meal for her at midnight the staff who've been working since six in the morning i suspect there was briefing against her and suddenly the the love relationship changed um andrew was away uh in on ships generally or in naval quarters he wasn't around when he came back at weekends he was tired he wanted to play golf or watch tv and she wanted to party so they actually you know were actually pretty incompatible characters and the thing began to unravel in 1992 she was caught with her lover financial advisor john bryan on holiday in the south of france and he was sucking her toes it was clear that you know this was a sexual relationship her children were there and the queen felt this just didn't look very good and basically put down the three-line whip that the couple had to separate.

8:07Was this who she truly was, do you think? Or was this who the title and the husband permitted her to be? Was she always going to behave in such an objectionable, obnoxious manner? Or was it the situation that she found herself in that pushed her into becoming that character? I mean, her parents were very extravagantly beyond their means, were in debt, were i would quite say social climbers but they were they were networkers so she didn't have a great sort of background to come from so i suspect you know whether she'd married andrew or someone else the story wouldn't be that different but clearly she had huge opportunities with andrew in terms of who she met the lifestyle she could lead the sort of money she could earn and you know one could say the same about andrew if he had married someone else a more shall we say less extravagant, a slightly mousier figure, the situation in his life might have been different.

9:02There does seem to be a parallel between the two of them, Andrew and Fergie, in the sense that both seem to be attracted like moths to a flame, to people of influence, to people, frankly, of huge wealth. And that has caused them both such incredible problems. Yes, I think that's fair. You know, he wanted the jet set life and Sarah was exactly the same. She wanted the high life, and I think she thought when she married Andrew, she was going to get it. And when she found it wasn't quite like that, she began to be attracted to people who could provide it. Right from the very beginning, there were these people who, for most of us, we would run a mile from, but for Andrew and Fergie, were people that could be useful to them and could support them and give them free holidays and pay for flights and could generally make their life pretty comfortable.

9:53The relationship did come to an end and divorce followed. But she did get a relatively decent payoff from the royal family around about that time. Although, of course, she did lose the HRH status. She makes a big, big, big thing of the fact that she was badly treated. And she was by comparison with Diana. But Diana was a slightly different case. But the royal family did treat her well. I mean, she had, I think, 1.3 million in trust for the children. They bought a house. They paid off a lot of her bills. and so I think they were pretty annoyed when she began to play this line that she'd been badly treated.

10:27She could quite easily have had a pretty good lifestyle on the money that she'd gotten the divorce settlement but of course she wanted to live a rather more exalted life. She felt she had to make her own living and she did that very successfully and quite quickly. She was a spokesperson for Weight Watchers which she did very successfully and she did a good job. She did on the shopping channels, promoting everything from cranberry juice to Duchess biscuits. And she could be basically paid to attend events. She was a brand influencer before that really became a term. You know, she was on the books and was paid large sums of money for speeches.

11:10She began to write children's books, which were well remunerated. So, you know, there were millions coming in. But the problem was she had extensive staff. she she would you know not think twice about flying on concord uh she traveled with huge bouts of excess luggage she entertained very extravagantly she had very expensive holidays so you know there is a very strong sense of of shall we say a lack of boundaries which she shares i have to say with her ex-husband uh and i think she's just used to getting away with bad behavior and and and so she continued not every um couple that ends in divorce ends up falling out entirely But I think many people have been surprised by the closeness of the relationship between Sarah and Andrew over the years.

11:55I mean, at one point they said that they were, I think this is from your book, divorced to each other, but not from each other. I mean, what's your understanding of the nature of that relationship? Well, I think if Andrew wasn't Prince Andrew, I'm not sure it would have survived in the same way. I mean, she hangs in limpet there because, of course, her whole raison d 'etre is based on being Duchess of York and being able to go to America. her social status, commercial opportunities all come from being as closely linked as she can make it to the royal family. I think there's a genuine affection between the two of them.

12:27They're co-parented and now co-grandparents. So I think for a lot of people it's difficult to understand but for those circles you know once you've had your heir and your spare you can kind of do what you want and that's sort of what happened here. But it does now feel that we've entered another chapter in the life of Sarah Ferguson with the publication of her email to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein had given her large sums of money and so she sort of did what she had to do in public, which was basically to distance herself, while at the same time trying to keep in with him. And of course, you know, that didn't work.

13:02He was very upset by the way she behaved because he had been very generous to her. And so she was sort of rowing back to try and save that relationship. But it was very cynical because, of course, she presents herself as this great champion of women's charities, as a writer of children's books. And yet here she is happily consorting with a convicted paedophile. So she's a complete hypocrite. And I can understand why charities feel she's pretty toxic now, because these people are meant to represent these charities. They are meant to represent their values. And clearly, these are not values that she has.

13:41The parallel between the behaviour of Andrew and Sarah, Andrew prioritising, you know, the access that Epstein gave him over the fact he should distance himself from a convicted paedophile. Sarah, according to you, looking for money, again, over distancing herself from a convicted paedophile. I mean, time and again, they have been offered the opportunity to make the right decision and they've just chosen the wrong one. I mean, you know, clearly there's several points where they could have rescued their reputations. Things could have been shut down. You know, if you'd never given the Newsnight interview, would Virginia Giffrey have brought her case?

14:15Would, you know, would all these things have emerged? But, you know, we can look back in hindsight and say, well, that was a crazy decision. But at the time, they're very impulsive, both of them. They don't think things through. And in some ways, you know, it is slightly poetic justice as a hubris about this. Even talking to the contemporaries, certainly of his at school, they said this was an accident waiting to happen. But it is a sad story because they were popular and they had huge potential, they had huge opportunities and they blew it. Is that it then for Fergie, do you think? Is that the last that we will see of her in public life at least?

14:55Yeah, well, no, I think never say never with Fergie. She's a great survivor and she will quietly do things under the radar. I mean, there are plenty of people, particularly in places like China and the Middle East, who are quite happy to associate with her still. I think for Andrew, his public life is going to be pretty limited. I think he's going to be smuggled into private family occasions. But, you know, there is always a residual affection for her as a survivor, as someone who has done some good work for charity, who is very charismatic. I don't think we've seen the last of Fergie. Given all of that, I mean, could this be the point at which she she decides to tell all.

15:31Well, that's the great worry. And she's the one who's more likely to do it. But the way the royal family bring her to heel is to say, well, we can make life very difficult for your daughters. So just think about their futures and perhaps their future roles. So there is, I suspect, a Mexican standoff. So that must be the worry, that, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. After four years of research, after four years of looking into this woman. And who is, to you, Sarah Ferguson? Well, Sarah Ferguson is a woman of great charm, great ability, a woman who could do a lot of good, has a great empathetic feel for particularly deprived children, but is also someone who is greedy, needy, and not very, shall we say, wise in the decisions she makes.

16:17So, you know, very complex, very, I suspect, torn. So a wonderful subject for a biography, but not always perhaps the best bedfellow for other members of the royal family. Thanks, Andrew. In a statement at the weekend, a spokesman for the Duchess of York said this. The Duchess spoke of her regret about her association with Epstein many years ago, and as they have always been, her first thoughts are with his victims. Like many people, she was taken in by his lies. As soon as she was aware of the extent of the allegations against him, She not only cut off contact, but condemned him publicly, to the extent that he then threatened to sue her for defamation for associating him with paedophilia.

16:59She does not resile from anything she said then. The statement concludes, This email was sent in the context of advice the Duchess was given to try and assuage Epstein and his threats. Thanks very much for listening. You can find all our Friday profiles just by scrolling back in your podcast app. They're also over on the Sky News YouTube channel if you fancy an extended video version of the episode. Stay warm, stay well. The Daily's back in the new year.