It’s the Fergie show: the duchess is queen of daytime TV
After all the ups and downs, the Duchess of York now holds court on various ITV sofas, but her royal ex could still be a problem.
On her ITV show last Tuesday, Lorraine Kelly introduced a guest star who was “back by popular demand”. This returning hero? None other than Sarah Ferguson, appearing on the sofa for the second time in a week to deliver her verdict on a selection of inexpensive last-minute Christmas gifts.
Daytime TV audiences must be wondering whether ITV is soft-launching a new presenter. The Duchess of York, 64, has been in and out of its studios recently.
By the time she’d plonked herself on Lorraine’s sofa last week, she’d already appeared on Good Morning Britain with Ed Balls and Susanna Reid the same morning. Regular viewers will remember a spot on the Loose Women panel last month, and a recent guest presenter slot on This Morning, where Fergie played agony aunt and advised two viewers on their love lives. She prescribed sexy underwear to both.
For one day only, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York has swapped the Royal Family for the This Morning Family! Tune in to see what she’s put together as Guest Editor and co-host of Monday's show... pic.twitter.com/0nGOr4IUNz
— This Morning 🎄 (@thismorning) November 20, 2023
ITV is said to be pleased with how she is going down and keen to make her feel welcome. She apparently has an open invitation to return to Loose Women and, according to royal insiders, is seriously considering a proper stint as a presenter.
Could she become appointment viewing? Dominic Mohan, founder of Dominic Mohan Media and a former editor of The Sun, said: “Fergie would struggle with the pressures of a daily role on a very demanding show but she could be a curious guest presenter every week or two in certain slots.”
Daytime TV is hard to crack. You need enough stardust to pop on screen but not so much that you alienate audiences; you need to guide proceedings, think quickly, and respond calmly to the unexpected. On most counts, Ferguson is rather wanting. Still, she’s no ingenue and has a long, eclectic TV show reel, much of it in America, where she has appeared on NBC, CNN, Good Morning America, Oprah and Larry King.
But Fergie is definitely being strategic, using old and new media to rebrand. In February she joined Instagram - in time to promote A Most Intriguing Lady, her second historical novel, a Bridgerton-esque romp published by Mills & Boon. She has also launched a podcast, Tea Talks.
She has had other things to deal with. She became a grandmother for the third time in May when her younger daughter, Eugenie, gave birth to a son, Ernest. In June, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a single mastectomy. In September, her former assistant Jenean Chapman was found dead in her Dallas apartment, allegedly murdered by her husband. In the midst of all that, her charitable work remains a bedrock of her brand.
But what of the elephant in the room? Or rather, sequestered in the Royal Lodge in Windsor, where Ferguson still lives with Prince Andrew. All but exiled by Charles after the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it looks like the Duke of York has no route back. A report from Statista in August found that 88 per cent of Britons had a negative opinion of him. As recently as April, Fergie defended her ex-husband on TalkTV.
Could the Andrew connection affect any television ambitions? “Shows like This Morning are terrified of live phone-ins being hijacked,” Mohan says, “and it could be very difficult if there were a topical discussion about the royals and Jeffrey Epstein.”
But Fergie is probably more bullish than most about bad PR. After her separation from Prince Andrew in 1992, there was a cascade of unfortunate headlines: the toe-sucking incident; the decade-long $1.5m-a-year Weight Watchers brand ambassadorship; offering $950,000 to a tabloid for access to her ex-husband.
And yet here she is, very much still standing - and sitting on ITV’s sofas. “People won’t catalogue or remember all her failings,” says Peter York, author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, who has observed the Duchess of York in the wild since she was a “jolly Sloane” knocking about west London. “But why she is on ITV, I can’t really think.”
The answer might be that she’s endearing and game for a laugh, which goes a long way in daytime TV. “What one sometimes forgets about Fergie is she has a roaring sense of humour and isn’t afraid of self-deprecation,” says Mohan. “But there is no way she can connect in the way, say, Holly Willoughby and Dermot O’Leary can.” And she may wish to practise using an autocue.
The Times
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