{"id":384193,"date":"2026-04-06T05:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T05:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/384193\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T05:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T05:02:07","slug":"burner-phones-an-italian-count-fergie-is-good-at-being-on-the-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/384193\/","title":{"rendered":"Burner phones, an Italian count? Fergie is good at being \u2018on the run\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blimey. Another day of revelations regarding Sarah Ferguson<\/a>, former wife of former Prince Andrew<\/a>, former duchess, former toast of 1980s society; now disgraced subsidiary in the whole, vile Epstein scandal\u2026 Another insight into a completely extraordinary set of life choices. According to yesterday\u2019s Mail on Sunday, Ferguson (who hasn\u2019t been seen in public since December \u2014 unless you count unsubstantiated Nessie-type spottings in Dubai, Switzerland and Ireland, and I\u2019m not sure you can) is on a \u201csecret sofa-surfing world tour\u201d. An international flit that has her bouncing from the home of one discrete and loaded friend to another, while in possession of not one but three burner phones. Her (self-evidently) less discrete and (presumably, because they\u2019re talking to the press) less loaded friends are reporting she\u2019s remaining in touch via FaceTime calls, and that she\u2019s in a \u201cdishevelled state\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe hasn\u2019t been taking care of her roots or keeping up with her Botox,\u201d one of them told the Mail, in such a way as to suggest they themselves had been on a recent FaceTime with Fergie (also that grey roots and ill-kempt Botox are the definitive signs of anyone\u2019s desperate late-stage coming undone\u2026 Actually, I\u2019m inclined to agree with that. They certainly would be in my case. Last things to go). (Oh \u2014 also? That person is either a woman or a gay man; while a straight man might be left with a general sense of disrepair, I\u2019m not sure they\u2019d zero in on the roots and emergent wrinkles with that level of specificity\u2026 Though maybe I\u2019m being reductively sexist here.)<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has three phones and she goes cycling through them because she\u2019s afraid that she might be being tracked. She is convinced that a lot of people wish her harm,\u201d says the same friend. (NB while you and I might not instantly identify a person who\u2019d had a private call with us then promptly and anonymously relayed its content to a national newspaper as a \u201cfriend\u201d, it\u2019s important to understand that the likes of Ferguson exist in different social conditions, ones built on wary allegiances and expectations of mutual back-scratchings rather than actual friendship \u2014 the kind of highly transactional arrangements that can bite one on the arse periodically, with a little light leaking.)<\/p>\n

Can I be honest? It was on hearing of the burner phones that I felt, maybe not \u201crespect\u201d for Fergie \u2014 not exactly \u2014 but something closer to it than I had ever felt before. Pre the Epstein revelations, she\u2019d served in my imagination as one of those high-profile hot messes who makes you feel better about your own screw-ups, because they are in no sense as bad as hers. I pitied her and she amused me, but did I respect her? No! Post the Epstein revelations, she actively appalled me; the grovelling and fawning and \u201cjust marry me\u201d \u2014 ugh. But now? I can\u2019t help but feel that, were I required to go on the run from a reputation-destroying scandal with likely legal implications, I wouldn\u2019t be as good at it as she appears to be. I certainly wouldn\u2019t know where to get a burner phone. Never mind three.<\/p>\n

Nor would I be able to rely on a network of wealthy friends over assorted continents to put me up in their guest wings. I do not have a network of wealthy friends over assorted continents. I\u2019ve just got\u2026 You know. Friends. And the one phone. On a contract.<\/p>\n

I also (oh God, this is a bit embarrassing) don\u2019t have a former relationship with a much older count on which I might fall back, in the event of my being cut loose by the royal family, hounded by the press, forced into fleeing and so forth; but Sarah Ferguson does. Count Gaddo della Gherardesca, her last known boyfriend, is 86 years old with a family pile in Tuscany, a ski lodge in Verbier, a mention of a 13th-century ancestor in Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy, and a nephew who was shot and killed by accident during a boar hunt (what else?) in 2010. According to The Friend, Ferguson is currently \u201cstaying in some place which is like a castle, and apparently there is an Italian count looking after her\u201d. Assuming Fergie isn\u2019t on can-you-sequester-me-in-your-castle terms with more than one count \u2014 and let\u2019s face it, she could be \u2014 this is probably Gaddo.<\/p>\n

Who, by the way, isn\u2019t even her only much older, much richer ex-boyfriend. She went out with Paddy McNally, the entrepreneur and former racing driver, now 88, for three years before she met and married Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Another loose-lipped friend of Fergie (collectively, by the way, this set is known as FoF, Friends of Fergie) claimed she had been staying with McNally in his Wiltshire home (as distinct from his home in Verbier and his home in St Tropez) as recently as last month. \u201cA lot of people, including well-known people, are quietly still very loyal to her,\u201d yet another Friend explained. \u201cNot that anyone is boasting about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fergie is said to be miserable in her new circumstances, asking, \u201cHow am I going to get through this?\u201d and complaining \u201ca lot about being broke \u2014 although I don\u2019t know if that is broke in the sense that you or I would understand it\u201d, said yet another one of those FoFs inclined to leak. Still, you could be forgiven for imagining she\u2019d spent her former life planning for these contingencies, getting her wealthy counts in a row and so forth. Because \u2014 grey roots and Botox notwithstanding \u2014 Sarah Ferguson does seem unnervingly good at being on the run. Certainly a great deal better at it than I\u2019d be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blimey. Another day of revelations regarding Sarah Ferguson, former wife of former Prince Andrew, former duchess, former toast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-384193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}