Medb Ruane: The rollicking saga of royalty needed its own court jester -- and then along came Fergie
Saturday May 29 2010
Sarah Ferguson is the House of Windsor's Jade Goody. Hurled into the royal family back in the 1980s, she's been a tabloid target since she let a rich Texan suck on her toes while she was still married to Prince Andrew. She's in bigger trouble now.
A fake sheik (really News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood) caught her out in a sting where she promised access to Andrew's influence in return for cash -- and a percentage of any deals done. Evidence on YouTube, Fox News and so on proves it and, curiously, implies that she assumed Andrew would go along with things.
Andrew, we discover, is Britain's Special Representative for Trade and Investment, meaning he spreads peace and love across the Middle East and some oil-rich former Soviet republics. Notably Kazakstan, which astute observers will recognise as the former spiritual home of Borat, known best for the song 'Throw the Jew down the Well'.(They want an image makeover.)
Sarah is being thrown to the wolves. Rightly so, some think. What a silly gel! What an insult to the Queen! Serious issues arise about rights to privacy and the journalistic integrity of setting her up. The same newspaper performed similar stings on Sophie, wife of Prince Edward, and on a woman known as Princess Michael of Kent.
Sarah's celebrity lifestyle makes her vulnerable. She needs money. Her alimony is only £15,000 (€17,000) a year, not much for a royal breeder, even one who never bore sons. Gender is crucial in the British Royal Family, which still bans Catholics from the succession stakes and won't let women move up the ranks unless, like Queen Elizabeth, they've no brothers. They are a strange lot.
Diana, by contrast, secured a £17m (€19.9m) settlement. She bequeathed most of it to her sons.
Andrew was pictured looking hurt but dignified, within weeks of his latest trip to Kazakstan. Pressure is on him to turf her out of her apartment in his grace-and-favour home, the Royal Lodge at Windsor Great Park.
Sarah moved there after a scented candle set her rented home ablaze (how could they tell it was scented, I wonder?) The former partners co-exist rather happily with their two daughters, who are in his custody.
Might it be treason to call Andrew a freeloader? The Royal Family is a weird anomaly because no member earns their place. There by blood alone, it's a museum piece from the middle ages, after various ancestors bludgeoned and politicked their way to power.
Caroline Aherne's The Royle Family sent them up beautifully but their survival owes most to Tony Blair, who recuperated the Queen's image after Princess Diana's death. And to Helen Mirren, who gave her the style and grace she lacked.
Sarah Ferguson married into this clan after being introduced to Andrew by her father Major Ronald Ferguson, whose wife had left him for some kind of South American polo player following years of his infidelities. He was also partial to massage parlours.
"Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar," Michael Charteris, the Queen's former private secretary called her. Of course she was. That was the point. The rollicking saga of royalty needed a court jester and Sarah performed the role well. Phobic about spiders, worried about her weight, Sarah was a truth-teller in a family whose truths always yielded to myth and where everyone preferred to believe they were special, way above the common man.
Not that she was smart. Sarah really belonged in a Jilly Cooper novel, where she'd be loved her for her nervous ebullience, as well as her sensual toes. Just like Jade Goody, she's larger than life, a self-made woman whose projects (from TV chat show hosting to being a WeightWatchers ambassador) are delightfully undignified -- and long may they be so.
Jade was vulgar too, a jester no one forgot despite her never winning the reality show. Truth was her metier but she was street-smart in a way Sarah ain't. Jade made a fortune and would probably have made more had she not died from cervical cancer last year.
Sarah clung onto her title and become famous in the US, where she embodies the self-made dream. News of the sting was book-ended by her attendance at Naomi Campbell's 40th birthday party and receiving an honour for her charity work in the US on behalf of children with disabilities.
Her right to privacy must come second to the public interest when questions of abuse of power arise. But the journalism is also suspect, because Sarah's way of being makes her such an easy target.
Andrew denied collusion. He reminded everyone that as he is non-political, he has only Britain's interests at heart.
The same man charged taxpayers for using a helicopter to fly him to some race or other, on the basis that he'd saved the exchequer the cost of police protection.
Here, it's called cronyism but in Britain, there seems to be a gentleman's agreement not to investigate the financial affairs of senior royals, many of whom receive cash and/or kind favours from the public purse.
Sarah wept on camera this week. She's had decades of being made to look silly. But what a turn out if it turns out she acted with Andrew's tacit support. Then she'd be the Duchess with the smoking gun.
Irish Independent
