\u2018Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar,\u2019 was the verdict of the late Lord Charteris on Sarah Ferguson. He did not, I think, mean it as a compliment. But her subsequent career has shown quite how liberating such a disposition of character can be. Combine a complete lack of class or taste with a resoundingly innocent love of money, and there\u2019s really nothing you can\u2019t do. Or won\u2019t, perhaps.<\/p>\n
Fergie says she was \u201csurprised\u201d to get a pair of corgis rather than jewellery or money<\/p>\n
Hence yesterday\u2019s Mail on Sunday headline, which offered welcome relief from all that stuff about oil prices and collateral damage: \u2018Fergie\u2019s Plot to Clone the Queen\u2019s Corgis for Reality TV.\u2019 The newspaper has discovered claims that after receiving two of her Majesty\u2019s corgis \u2013 Muick and Sandy \u2013 in the late Queen\u2019s will, our gal set about finding ways to monetise the bequest. Where there\u2019s Muick, I dare say she may have mused to herself, there\u2019s brass.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, she apparently discussed the idea for a reality television show, starring her, which would follow her attempt to make money out of the corgis. Double-bubble: if all went well, she\u2019d make money from the corgis and make money from the TV show about her making money from the corgis. As one source familiar with the situation told the Mail on Sunday: \u2018Sarah seemed to be up for anything provided she was paid \u2013 and particularly if she could do some travelling in the process and meet rich aristos who might like to own a corgi.\u2019<\/p>\n
After several meetings with production companies, a pitch document was drafted. For connoisseurs of TV-production bollocks, it\u2019s a bit of a beaut. Note the would-be arresting use of the present tense, the inevitable \u2018bold and controversial\u2019 (TV shows have to contain what they call \u2018jeopardy\u2019), \u2018navigates the complex world\u2019 (it\u2019s a journey!) and, of course, \u2018personal demons\u2019:<\/p>\n
\u2018When Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is bequeathed two of the Queen\u2019s beloved corgis, she decides to embark on a bold and controversial business venture \u2013 cloning the royal pups.\u00a0But as she navigates the complex world of genetics and royal protocol, Sarah must also grapple with her own personal demons and strained relationship with the royal family.\u2019<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a source of some regret, I think, that the whole thing came to nothing. But if we are determined to disapprove of the alleged plan (\u2018unbelievably grotesque and utterly bizarre,\u2019 says one royal-watching rentaquote, when \u2018amusing\u2019 and \u2018delightful\u2019 were right there for the taking), I don\u2019t think Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, blessed be her memory, entirely escapes blame. Fergie says she was \u2018surprised\u2019 to get a pair of corgis rather than jewellery or money in the late monarch\u2019s will. I\u2019m not surprised she was surprised. Her Maj had many years to get the measure of her former daughter-in-law, and by all accounts those wretched corgis were among her most precious things. What did she think Fergie would do with them?<\/p>\n
Were bookmakers to have been taking bets on the matter, the odds-on favourite would have been \u2018cloning them for a reality TV programme\u2019, with \u2018bottling their farts and selling them by mail order to Americans who like the Paddington movies\u2019 coming in only a close second.<\/p>\n
Fergie\u2019s representatives have admitted that she received the proposal from a production company but that she did not progress discussions and subsequently declined the proposal.\u00a0She denies having \u2018any intention of monetising the corgis.\u2019<\/p>\n
While Fergie\u2019s response seems to put the matter to bed, if she had proceeded as claimed\u00a0must we disapprove? Who is to say it would have been the worst thing in the world anyway? Cloning corgis is as far as I understand it a non-invasive procedure, and the chance to own an exact replica of a corgi once owned by the Queen of England would give immense joy to a certain type of person. All those corgis kinda looked the same anyway, so the presence in the world of a few authentically identical ones wouldn\u2019t devalue the currency in any significant way. Meanwhile, the chance to look down on the one-time Duchess of York\u2019s money-grubbing antics on a reality TV programme would delight another type of person \u2013 principally, the type who write newspaper columns. The whole thing would have been a giant win-win, and I dare say the corgis wouldn\u2019t have cared a bit.<\/p>\n
To ascend to a slightly more philosophical plane, now that the Divine Right of Kings has gone out of fashion, isn\u2019t genetics the very essence of the hereditary principle? If she had agreed to the proposal, wouldn\u2019t Sarah Ferguson, in her whimsical but clumsy way, have been putting her manicured finger on the heart of something both important and a little absurd about our monarchy?<\/p>\n
Think of cloning the corgis as a trial balloon for something infinitely thrilling. After all, we have come to accept as a matter of course that the descent of the crown through the generations is accompanied by a slight but perceptible deterioration of the genetic stock. Her Majesty, to pick just a single example, had a splendid head of hair right to the end of her long life. The King is pretty bald. The Prince of Wales is even balder.<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t we all, in our secret hearts, and respect his Majesty though we do, prefer it had we been able to install an exact clone of the late Queen on the throne in his place? The technology wasn\u2019t there at the time, and it isn\u2019t there yet. But one day, it seems likely, it will be. Think how grateful Prince George and his descendants will be to be let off the prospect of doing that thankless job, while Queen Elizabeth III is followed by Queen Elizabeth IV and Queen Elizabeth V and so on. Extra money could be made, to relieve pressure on the public finances, by selling spare clones of Her Majesty to other countries in need of a monarch of proven quality.<\/p>\n
The monarchy, it has long been said, is in need of modernisation. But all the so-called modernisers ever think of is combining a few administrative functions, mothballing the odd marquisate, or trimming the civil list. Yet here, vulgar, vulgar, vulgar, Sarah Ferguson could have pointed the way to true modernity. Plus, as I mentioned, the corgis wouldn\u2019t mind a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar,\u2019 was the verdict of the late Lord Charteris on Sarah Ferguson. He did not, I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-172372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}