LONDON – Britain’s Duchess of York was caught on camera by a newspaper apparently offering to sell access to her ex-husband and UK trade envoy Prince Andrew and said yesterday she had been “devastated” by the sting.
According to footage on the News of the World's website published yesterday, Sarah Ferguson appears to ask for $40,000 in cash and £500,000 ($718,500) by wire transfer, claiming she could introduce the undercover reporter to the prince.
The newspaper said the prince, the second son of Queen Elizabeth and fourth in line to the throne, knew nothing about Ferguson’s claims. Buckingham Palace was unavailable to comment.
“She is devastated by the story and deeply regrets the situation and any embarrassment it has caused,” Ferguson’s spokeswoman said when asked for reaction from the duchess, known as “Fergie” and no stranger to controversy.
In the tape filmed on Tuesday, Ferguson, over a glass of red wine and a cigarette, makes it clear that her former husband “never does accept a penny for anything”.
The sting is nonetheless likely to cause embarrassment for Andrew (who divorced Ferguson amicably in 1996 after a decade-long marriage) and for Britain’s austere royal family.
The 50-year-old prince, also known as the Duke of York, acts as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment, augmenting work by the business ministry.
“£500,000 when you can, to me . . . open doors,” she said in the film the newspaper said was shot at a plush London apartment, before shaking hands with the reporter who had posed as a wealthy businessman.
“Then you open up all the channels, whatever you need, whatever you want . . . We can do so much.” The newspaper reported Ferguson, whose New York-based promotional company Hartmoor folded last year, saying she was a “complete aristocrat” and that she and Andrew were the “happiest divorced couple in the world”.
In an earlier meeting, the newspaper quoted her saying she did not have “a pot to piss in”.
Fergie arrived like a breath of fresh air on the sedate royal scene in 1986 as a confident career-minded woman determined to live life to the full.
But she ruffled feathers by refusing to let royal protocol get in the way of a good time and had to get used to unrelenting ribbing at the hands of Britain’s media who never warmed to her.
She said on the eve of the wedding she was “not the sort of woman who is going to meekly trot along beside her husband”.
The couple have two daughters, Beatrice (21) and Eugenie (20).
A remote descendent of King Charles II, Fergie was one of Andrew’s childhood playmates and her father, Maj Ronald Ferguson, was polo manager to Prince Charles, heir to the throne.
Romance bloomed after Princess Diana, the late wife of heir to the throne Prince Charles, suggested Sarah as an escort for Andrew at the queen’s annual house party.
While Ferguson (50) never matched Diana’s worldwide adoration or fame, she found some consolation in the United States through a variety of television appearances, penning weight-loss books and charity work.
The duchess was expected to pick up an award in Los Angeles last night for her work with underprivileged children at an awards ceremony organised by children’s charity Variety.
– (Reuters)