Fergie could truly change everything for the palace
No longer a duchess and with no obvious way to make money any more, Sarah Ferguson could be about to do the unthinkable.
This is a story about the royal family and very large, roastable birds.
In December an organic Norfolk bird will meet their maker, bound for the Sandringham table, and at some point in the near future, King Charles could find his proverbial goose thoroughly cooked.
The reason: The Redhead, as Diana, Princess of Wales called Sarah Ferguson, could be about to go off like an unexploded World War Two bomb found down the back of the Windsor woodshed.
Buckingham Palace’s finest are reportedly working up a decidedly ungentlemanly sweat over the possibility that the former Duchess of York will sit for a tell-all TV interview with networks around the world reportedly vying for her story.
If that were to happen then, Charles’ chestnuts? Good and roasted.
Queen Elizabeth famously called 1992 her annus horribilis but for Fergie, a woman on intimate, lifelong terms with ignominy and scandal, this year really has been the most horribilis, all self-inflicted.
As 2025 closes out, she is about to find herself homeless, likely jobless, and you’d have to assume, largely friendless, for which one should feel not a jot or crumb of sympathy.
Please sir, could I have some more schadenfreude?
Fergie is reportedly set to split, after decades of chummily rooming together, with ‘the best man she knows’, ex husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a man whose real uppance, I hope, is yet to truly come.
So what is a former duchess, with bills to pay and facing the prospect of possibly, truly, moving into a converted cowshed at daughter Princess Beatrice’s house, to do?
Blab and blab some more, to the highest bidder.
Or at least that’s the fear inside the Palace according to The Sun, which has reported that Fergie is “weighing” up six figure offers to do a tell-all interview.
Her team has reportedly already gotten “significant” bids from American networks, with stations in the Gulf States and the UK also said to be vying to get her.
This is backed up by a friend of the former Yorks telling Tom Sykes of The Royalist Substack that the former duchess is “of course” fielding interview offers.
So, Crown Inc, for obvious reasons, is reportedly having themselves a decent, high grade fret.
A source told The Sun that ”There’s a danger of her going rogue and saying things that could cause embarrassment for King Charles and Queen Camilla, or other members of the family” which is as astute an insight as saying the sea might be wet or that gin goes nicely with a moderate splash of tonic.
Fergie has been going rogue since George Michael was ‘straight’ and leg warmers considered just wizard.
For Fergie though there could be plenty of upside.
On the pro side for the former royal, who has had her very last Ascot cream tea, would be all that lovely lolly, imperative given she has to support herself having proven about as good with money over the years as Prince Harry at staying on speaking terms with his father, her financial incontinence the stuff of grotesquely profligate legend.
No brand, no company and no publisher will surely touch her now even with a telescopic barge pole such is the taint of her lying about cutting ties with Epstein and fawningly calling him her “supreme friend”.
There is also the added factor of the reputational clean up operation of an interview, though I have my serious doubts about how successful that might be. Having one’s toes sucked in the Cote d’Azur sun is one thing; sucking up to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein like a greedy Dyson on full power is another.
“She and her team know a televised interview would be make or break for her in terms of salvaging her reputation” an insider told The Sun.
“It would also give her the chance to spell out the fact she knew nothing about what Epstein and his associates were doing in terms of abusing girls.”
“Sarah is actually quite keen to answer questions as she strongly believes she’s done nothing wrong, and been harshly treated.”
“Keen”? If you say so.
The only thing that could present a potential handbrake here is that if Fergie should go down the interview path and really let loose, it would be irrevocable, no-way-back into Charles’ good books.
The years since the late Queen’s death have seen the King quietly bring his former sister-in-law back into the fold, allowing her to join the wider royal family at Christmas in 2023 for the first time in more than 30 years.
Invitations to Easters and even to roll up to a Buckingham Palace official reception followed.
As recently as September, Andrew and Fergie were reportedly given a police escort to the Duchess of Kent’s funeral and took their place gobbily grinning amidst the otherwise sombre royal family.
All that ground has now been vehemently, irrevocably lost with the King having finally located his moral compass and backbone in October and finally stripped Andrew of his titles and palatial 30-room home in a far-too-late attempt to lance the pustulent York boil.
Because even if Fergie could somehow convince Charles to let her back into the royal enclosure, it would be but a stay of execution given that it was reportedly Prince William who was the driving force behind Andrew’s took-too-long defenestration.
When the day of William V comes, the closest that the erstwhile Yorks will come to touching the hem of royalty will be if they scroll past The Crown on Netflix.
While Fergie has had more second comings than a spring loaded deity over the last three decades, this could and should be it for her, the point of no royal return.
So, if she has nothing left to lose in terms of royal favour then why not just go nuclear? Tell a nodding TV host everything and anything?
She could have just one shot now to rake in as much cash as she can before she JetBlues herself off to Dubai to spend her grasping days clutching at freebie lunches with rackety Russians.
For the royal family, the source told The Sun, “there’s not much they can do to stop her”.
“If she does do a TV interview, she won’t run off and do it immediately.”
Hear that Charles? That just might be the sound of a duchess chucking out a fishing line hoping a billionaire monarch might decide to open his chequebook to save the royal family from another Epstein-related York-splosion of horrendous PR.
Maybe the King might be able to buy himself a Christmas miracle after all.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
