In 2001 it was revealed that Queen Elizbabeth had gotten her first mobile phone. Today, we have learnt that Sarah Ferguson has gone two better and is currently juggling three burners.
Such is the new life on the lam of the former Duchess of York — in what sounds like a depressing Bond spin-off, she is reportedly fretting about being tracked and is crashing at the vast homes of a couple of her cashed up ex-boyfriends.
How does she look? “Dishevelled” is the description one of Fergie’s friend gave the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff.
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Adding to the chaotic energy is that Fergie is reportedly busy juggling multiple mobiles in her quest to stay hidden.
Said a friend: “She has three phones and she goes cycling through them because she’s afraid that she might be being tracked. She is convinced that a lot of people wish her harm.
“She really is low. She seems nervy”.
A friend told the Mail: “She complains a lot about being broke – although I don’t know if that is broke in the sense that you or I would understand it. Her friends have been joking that they wouldn’t be surprised to find her selling her old handbags on Vinted.”
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Luckily, Fergie has a secret weapon — or weapons. Despite everything, every Epstein revelation, every email exposing her years of industrial-grade sucking up to him and cadging cash from the convicted sex offender, somehow still has a network of “discreet, wealthy friends” willing to lend her the 0.1 per cent equivalent of a semi-inflated air mattress.
Per the Mail, the former duchess has been on a “secret sofa-surfing world tour” which has landed her in various places including what might be an enormous, thousand-year-old Tuscan castle.
From 1997 until the early naughties, Fergie dated Count Gaddo della Gherardesca, 20 years her senior, the only serious relationship she seems to have had in the decades since she and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor divorced.
And it is to Count Gaddo’s Castle of Castagneto Carducci that some think Fergie might have flown, an even more attractive option when you realise he makes his own wine too. (Denuding an aristorcrtaic cellar? I’d say a stressed out Fergie is up to that particular challenge.)
The evidence? According to one friend, the erstwhile duchess has been “staying in some place which is like a castle now, and apparently there is an Italian count looking after her.”
Others think a different octogenarian former boyfriend might have found himself on Fergie-sitting duty, the state of wine stores, unknown.
In the 80s, before a certain guffawing, toothy prince gallomped into her life, Fergie dated racing car driver and businessman Paddy McNally, now 88-years-old. The duo are reported to have stayed on good terms, handy for Fergs as McNally is worth more than $1.1 billion and has houses with a multitude of spare rooms in Wiltshire, St Tropez and Verbier.
There has been speculation that McNally has been putting up the one-woman crisis-machine that is Fergie at his Wiltshire property and others suggesting she was staying at his Swiss ski chalet.
It’s not as if she has anything much waiting for her back in Britain. Her career? Torched to the ground and the ashes buried at sea. Her reputation? More toxic than the Fukushima catch-of-the-day. Her daughters? Not willing to take her in, reportedly.
However, people who might want a word with Fergie, and not just a rumpled FaceTime call from a Tuscan tasting room, are British investigators.
Andrew’s sweat glands should be getting a refresher course right now after it was revealed that police are widening their inquiry into the former duke “beyond the offence of misconduct in public office” and that he “is set to be investigated over other potential corruption offences on top of a scoping inquiry into alleged sex trafficking”, The Times has reported. (Andrew has previously denied all wrongdoing.)
Historian Andrew Lownie, author of the bombshell Entitled, said during an episode of The Lownie Report podcast last month that Ferige “must be very concerned about what her position might be.”
There are, Lownie said, “lots of rumours that she’s co-operating with police and prepared to put the boot into her husband. I don’t know how valid those rumours are, but it wouldn’t put it past her.”
Also in March, a US lawmaker sent her a letter demanding she testify before Congress. Clearly she has not been rushing to book a ticket to Dulles airport to help those investigating the man she called her “supreme friend” and she joked, “marry me”. (‘Joked” or ‘joked-but-would-totally-have-said-yes-now-where’s-the-ring’?)
Maybe Fergie’s not able to get her post in Tuscany, if that’s where she is.
What I find incredible about this “dishevelled” Fergie-in-a-castle report is she still inspires such loyalty – consider my belief truly beggared. This is a woman who visited Epstein five days after he was released from jail for teen sex offences, towing her daughters aged 19 and 20 with her. Who said she had cut off contact with Epstein – only to be caught red-handed lying in emails in which she so nauseatingly sucked up to him the Department of Justice should have handed out sick bags. Who is alleged by biographer Andrew Lownie of having accepted millions of dollars from Epstein.
Let’s not forget that it was in 2010 that the Daily Beast published a lengthy investigation into Epstein including reporting that he had been “presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day”. All of this information was but a Google search away.
Yet according to Lownie, Fergie stayed in contact with Epstein as late as 2015.
In all of this, there is one ex who no longer seems to have her back. A friend has told the Mail: “She and Andrew are on speaking terms but not talking that much. It is almost as if they have run away from each other.”
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.