FEMALE NARRATOR: Sarah Ferguson...
..the outspoken and often outrageous Duchess
who can't stop putting her foot in it.
This barrel's for me.
There's certainly a sense that Fergie liked to have fun.
She liked to sort of play jokes,
but actually it began to wear rather thin.
She's like a sort of steam roller that just keeps going.
And her other half, Prince Andrew, the Queen's second son,
and, by all accounts, her very favourite.
He was the pin-up boy, if you like, of the royal family,
he was the one who got the looks and he was a good-looking young man.
Together, they make up the most controversial couple
in the royal family.
High-profile problems have plagued them.
I can't think of a worst thing
than coming down to breakfast and find photographs
of having your toes sucked seen by your family.
Prince Philip was apoplectic,
and swore that she must never step across the threshold
of Balmoral again.
They've reeled from one disaster to the next.
They're in a bubble.
They've both had so much controversy,
it's them against the world.
So, why has it gone so wrong for this royal couple?
Is it about craving attention?
At last, I have the turn to talk.
(LAUGHTER)
All these men around here.
Or are they just out of touch?
Well, I have to ask the question, what is a reasonable lifestyle?
One of Andrew's biggest, biggest failings
is his singular lack of judgment,
and that's bound up in a, sort of, sense of entitlement and arrogance
that he's always had, frankly.
Tonight, this is the incredible story of how, together,
Andrew and Fergie have lurched from one scandal to another.
This case with Epstein is so serious.
This is so much more serious than Randy Andy, air-miles Andy.
And how, throughout it all,
they've managed to maintain the closest bond.
In a way, she's his wife in everything but name.
We go behind the scenes
to reveal just why they've made so many mistakes.
Andy and Fergie go in a little bit headfirst
and, where you or I might think, "That's not a good idea,"
it just doesn't occur to them.
In 1986, Britain enjoyed a royal romance.
26-year-old commoner Sarah Ferguson
got engaged to Prince Andrew.
NEWSREADER: The polished performance
followed hard on the heels of the appearance of a palace official
with the universally expected announcement
of their engagement mid-morning.
It generated intense excitement.
REPORTER: Are you jealous of Sarah Ferguson?
Yes, very, yes.
She's absolutely gorgeous.
I only wish I was 60 years younger. He wouldn't stand a chance.
Inside, the royal couple were showing off the ring.
Can I ask you, then, Miss Ferguson, do you remember what he said?
Absolutely, but I'm not telling you!
What went awry with that dashing young couple?
And what led to the downfall of the Duke and Duchess?
They may not have been royal,
but the Ferguson family had always had close links to the monarchy.
Her father, Major Ron, was polo manager,
initially to the Duke of Edinburgh and later Charles.
Sarah and Prince Andrew were friends as youngsters.
DR ANNA WHITLOCK: Young Sarah was on the fringes of the royal family,
and, as children she first came into contact with Prince Andrew.
This idyllic childhood
was ruptured by the break-up of her parents' marriage.
Her mother, Susan, a former society beauty,
caused a stir when she ran off to Argentina with a dashing polo player.
Fergie and her sister, Jane, stayed with their father.
EVE POLLARD: The last big conversation she had with her mother
before she went was her mother didn't like her hair.
This is a girl of 12.
And she really thought, for many years,
her mother had left because her hair wasn't right.
If you think your mother doesn't love you,
I think you're always panicked by self-doubt.
INGRID SEWARD: Sarah's father was terrific,
but obviously he wasn't a housewife and he wasn't great at cooking.
He did master scrambled eggs,
and they would just eat eggs out of a saucepan
because he thought, well,
"What's the point of dirtying all the plates?"
After her emotionally difficult teenage years,
Fergie moved to London and shared with friends.
REPORTER: Will there be an announcement this week?
Her flatmate adored her.
NEWSREADER: Sarah Ferguson's flatmate, Carolyn Beckwith-Smith,
is on holiday in Barbados.
Just great fun, really, and interested in lots of things.
Fergie threw herself into London life.
She went on to have serious relationships.
She wasn't the, sort of, unspoiled young woman
that Diana was expected to be as mother of a future king.
RICHARD KAY: As Ron Ferguson famously said,
of course she's got a past.
She's 25, 26 years old.
If she hadn't got a past,
then that would be some serious questions to ask about.
She dated a stockbroker,
then lived with a millionaire called Paddy McNally.
She enjoyed the jet-set lifestyle in his chalet in Switzerland.
She and McNally, who was a widower with two young sons,
fell in love.
And they had a fairly lengthy romance,
but McNally was much older.
You know, almost 20 years older than Sarah.
DICKIE ARBITER: He was very rich,
Fergie likes very rich men and was living a good lifestyle,
but I don't believe for a moment
there was any question of McNally proposing to Fergie.
The romance, and lifestyle, came to an end,
but, in 1985, she found her prince.
Although Fergie and Andrew had shared paths in childhood,
they'd had very different upbringings.
RICHARD KAY: Well, Andrew has a unique place in royal life
because he was the first child born to a reigning monarch
since the early days of Queen Victoria's reign.
She and Andrew had a very close relationship.
He's constantly described as the Queen's favourite son.
They are extremely close,
and, in a way, closer than Charles and Anne ever were.
DICKIE ARBITER: He was spoiled,
and Andrew was pretty assured of himself.
He knew what he wanted and he made sure that he got it.
He had the looks, he had the physique.
And you either liked him or you didn't like him.
I think a lot of people didn't like him.
If some of his fellow pupils didn't like him,
the same couldn't be said of women.
Prince Andrew had already been christened with a number of nicknames
regarding his love life.
REPORTER: Randy Andy is the best known.
The Prince has a practiced eye for the ladies,
and his romantic adventures have been well publicised.
The gossip columns make no mention of a serious romance at the moment,
possibly because the list of temporary romances is so long.
Andrew had served as a Navy helicopter pilot
during the Falklands War, then later moved to 'HMS Brazen'.
His helicopter is a Lynx,
which he's nicknamed the Hussy, as in the Brazen Hussy.
He was one of the country's most eligible bachelors.
KATIE NICHOLL: Here was our hero wartime prince
who came back from the Falklands, dashing and handsome,
with a rose clenched between his teeth.
He was incredibly good-looking in his youth,
and he was very popular with women and he had an eye for women.
REPORTER: The organisers of the sports display
haven't forgotten the prince's reputation with the girls.
12 of the most shapely danced before him,
and the prince's face said the rest.
Prince Andrew had had a rather chequered love life.
He'd been in a relationship for a long time
with Koo Stark, the American actress.
Koo was an absolutely beautiful young woman,
very much in love with Andrew,
but she wasn't going to fit the bill for a royal bride.
Although there had been rumours of marriage, the couple split.
He was 26.
He was at an age where the queen really wanted to see him
start thinking about settling down,
and Sarah came into his life at just the right time.
In 1985, Fergie appeared on the dashing prince's horizon,
and the matchmaker was none other than Princess Diana.
Diana and Fergie had met when they were younger,
and Diana actually wanted Fergie to be her lady in waiting,
but she was turned down and she said by the men in grey.
So, Diana thought, "OK, I will get my own back."
DICKIE ARBITER: Ascot was coming around.
Diana suggested that Fergie join the royal party,
and Andrew met her, and they clicked right away.
It was...it was a fast match, a pretty quick romance.
It was clear they would not be a traditional royal couple.
Sarah and Andrew
fed each other profiteroles, which were the dessert of the day.
I mean, it beggars the belief
to think of what the queen and other members of the royal family
made of it,
but it was something that they plainly both remembered
because it was brought up in their engagement interview
some nine months later.
We were made to sit next door to each other at lunch at Ascot.
Yes, and he made me eat chocolate profiteroles,
which I didn't want to eat at all.
I, then, didn't have any, so I got hit.
Very hard.
And it started from there. I think that's probably...
I was meant to be on a diet.
They were both keen to set the date for a royal wedding.
I would very much like it to be in the summer and so would Sarah.
Sarah more so because, I think...
Get on with it.
Get on with it and get it out of the way.
TOM QUINN: She was often contrasted with Diana,
and, in those early days, Sarah came out of the contrast rather well
because Diana was seen as rather pale and wilting, you know,
this delicate flower, whereas Fergie was robust, like the Wife of Bath.
How do they look to you on the TV? Smashing, really relaxed.
I think they look really well.
I hope it goes as well as it did for Di and Charles.
Sarah Ferguson was going to be a Navy wife,
and as she was from a military family background it seemed a perfect match.
The Queen approved of her favourite son's choice of bride.
REPORTER: Westminster Abbey the focus of attention tomorrow,
and where today the more intrepid spectators
have already staked out their patches to get a good view.
On a hot July day in 1986, the country celebrated.
Fergie's 17-foot train
had the initials A and S intertwined
and sewn in silver beads.
Everybody thought it was stunningly beautiful.
As she always said, I walked in as a commoner
and I walked out as a duchess.
A bit of a fairy-tale, that, wasn't it?
I mean, it's Cinderella, you know?
At this precise moment,
Sarah Ferguson became Duchess of York.
They come out of signing the registry,
and a royal bride and groom curtsy to Her Majesty, the Queen.
A lot of brides have been quite sombre at that moment.
Fergie is giving a big smile to the Queen,
and the Queen, I think, is smiling right back.
So, there's that feeling, this is going to be fun.
Even on her big day,
it was clear that the new bride was going to create waves.
(CHEERING)
KATIE NICHOLL: Sarah later revealed that she'd been asked
not to kiss Andrew on the balcony at Buckingham Palace.
And I think perhaps in a hint of her rebellious nature,
Sarah's attitude was, "Well, here I am.
"Hundreds of thousands of people in front of us here.
"I've got my prince, I'm going to kiss him," and she did.
Others were not as impressed by the displays of exuberance.
I was commentating at the time of the wedding,
and, when they went behind the altar screen
to go and sign the registry, they were larking about a bit.
And I said to my co-commentator,
"That's a marriage that's not going to last."
A certain amount of decorum wasn't there.
For the most part, press and public adored
the new, fun, unfussy couple, especially the all-action duchess.
DIANA YOUNG: I think that their brand and their image
was really positive.
Creating a positive impression enables you to, kind of,
influence and effectively manage your reputation.
The newest arrival typifies the greater freedom of the young royals,
becoming the first royal duchess to get a pilot's licence
complete with very un-Biggles-style hair grips.
I was absolutely in love with Sarah Ferguson as a wee girl.
I thought she was just so refreshing.
I think they had this amazing honeymoon period.
They really were the golden couple,
and she was really seen as a genuine breath of fresh air.
The Yorks weren't just a hit at home.
The following year, the couple embarked on a 25-day tour of Canada.
Their tour of Canada went extremely well.
There were tens of thousands of people
pouring out wherever they went.
They wanted to see the new bride.
They wanted to see the new bridegroom.
It was a terrific tour, that tour to Canada, 1987.
I was on it, actually, and it was a great privilege to be there.
They were hugely popular.
They were enthusiastic.
I think that's what the public reacted to.
They weren't there just to cut the ribbons
at the opening of things,
and say, "How nice to meet you," and, "Have you come far?"
But actually engage with people.
I could not go through a whole tour letting my darling husband
of a year and a day
do all the public speaking,
so we agreed, for once...
(LAUGHTER)
..that I should have the last word tonight.
The Yorks were like no other royal couple before,
more relaxed and far less serious.
You make us feel so at home here,
and I am just a little bit sad
that number 99 of the Edmonton Oilers
isn't here to meet me tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
But the fun times did not last long.
Stormy waters soon appeared for the Navy wife and the handsome prince.
She was a very passionate woman,
and, within months, weeks of marrying,
she found her husband was away all the time.
And Fergie's desire for attention started to grate with the public.
All her natural charm, which had been celebrated initially,
began suddenly to be seen as rather unsophisticated and inappropriate.
FEMALE NARRATOR: After marriage,
Fergie embraced her new life with gusto.
Her Royal Highness, the fair Duchess of York,
leading forth her heroes
on behalf of the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless.
In 1987, she took part in the now infamous 'It's a Royal Knockout'.
'It's a Royal Knockout.'
What an absolute unmitigated disaster that was.
His Royal Highness,
the tantalisingly eligible Prince Edward.
It was younger members of the royal family
actually making fools of themselves.
And it was bad television. It was bad for the royal family.
A one-off charity event organised by Prince Edward,
it was hosted on the lakeside lawn at Alton Towers.
Fergie and Andrew had their own team.
Basically, we're the best.
We are the best blue bandits there are.
And they were with, I remember, Pamela Stevenson,
who was a big, big comedy actress at the time.
Big, bad, blue bandits! (CHEERING)
And it was just crazy.
They were rushing all over the place in these sort of mediaeval costumes.
And Fergie was really over the top, sort of shouting and yelling.
It was just very, very undignified.
OK, it's Meatloaf coming in.
That really was the beginning of the time, I think,
when the public began to question Fergie,
and what she was getting out of royalty,
rather than what she was putting into it.
Like many others of the time,
she was mocked merciless on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image.
Oh, do get a move-on, Lurgie, you old slag,
it's been well over an hour.
I know, sausage, but I'm putting on my make-up.
They very much heightened some of the tropes about her.
So, you know, they made her hair very, very red,
and they really accentuated her freckles.
And they also rather cruelly made a big issue about her weight.
Get your royal T-shirts here.
Four sizes - small, medium, large and Fergie.
If you're Sarah Ferguson watching that,
you are going to feel a sting of pain.
Come on. Come on, lads.
The Duchess was struggling to adjust to her new royal life.
She was vulnerable,
and it didn't help that there were cruel comparisons
in the press to her elegant and beautiful sister-in-law, Diana.
Sarah's always had a weight problem.
It goes up and down with monotonous regularity,
and the media
always drawing comparisons between Fergie and Diana,
Diana looking very, sort of, slim, beautiful,
Fergie not looking so slim and not looking so beautiful,
very difficult and very unfair.
As the media coverage turned negative,
Fergie found herself getting flak from all sides.
She came in for some criticism for liking the product too much.
(LAUGHTER)
This barrel's for me.
Come on, babe.
The honeymoon was over.
'Royal Yacht Britannia', 'Royal Yacht Britannia',
we wish to welcome you to the port of Long Beach, Los Angeles,
on behalf of the entire group here.
In 1988, the couple visited California.
Fergie, Fergie, Fergie!
Hollywood loved them.
ROBOT: Your Royal Highnesses, welcome to the British Academy,
Showscan's special presentation on Hollywood special effects.
But the UK press didn't.
The previous Canadian tour had been a triumph,
but this trip was branded tacky and excessive.
They felt she was trying just a bit too hard.
The USA tour was really still the same Sarah
and still the same Andrew,
but there was a slightly brash thing.
I mean, I remember she was wearing an outfit one day,
and she said, check the back of her hair.
Check out the hair.
(COOING)
On the tour of America, she was too loud.
She was perceived as being not what a royal should be.
And I think the damage done on that tour to her reputation
dogged her ever since.
Cream cakes and I don't see eye to eye.
I'm savoury. I'm sausages.
Oh, sausages. Is that what you like? Yeah.
REPORTER: The Duke and Duchess were 20 minutes late
because, when they left the yacht, the Duchess's hat blew off,
and, on this day, the hat was particularly important.
Again, Fergie's confidence and lack of inhibition or protocol
made headlines.
At last, I have the turn to talk.
She confidently dealt with a heckler.
All these men around here.
There was one occasion, at a dinner,
there was one particular senator,
and he'd probably had one too many drinks and he kept on calling out,
"We love you, Fergie. We love you, Fergie."
We love you.
And she just sort of retorted...
I'll see you later.
(LAUGHTER)
The British media thought it was the wrong thing to do
it was the wrong sort of reaction.
I think she handled it particularly well.
What is it?
Art. Oh.
If Sarah Ferguson's quip didn't win over the stuffy press,
then her overfamiliarity with them didn't help her cause, either.
At a swish reception, she divulged intimate details about her clothes.
For that tour,
she was head to toe in French couture,
and joked to the press there
that she was wearing Marks and Spencer's knickers.
This is not what you're expecting the Duchess of York to say.
Remember, the previous Duchess of York had been the Queen Mother.
So, you're talking about a changing view of the royal family.
You're talking about the country changing.
They want them to be up on a pedestal.
But then, when they say something like that,
they think, "Oh, you've slipped down from the pedestal."
Back home, the continuing attention-seeking gaffes
didn't go down well,
and the press began to worry Fergie was somehow leading Diana astray.
There's certainly a sense that Fergie liked to have fun,
she liked to sort of play jokes,
but actually it began to wear rather thin,
and she was seen increasingly as a bad, unsophisticated influence
on Diana and Prince Andrew, and something of a loose cannon.
The Royal Duchess and Princess Diana
were caught larking around at the races.
There was an iconic picture of them at Ascot,
and there's Fergie and Diana with these umbrellas,
you know, poking somebody's behind.
It was a great shot.
But I think obviously that was another opportunity
to say that she was a bad influence on Diana,
which actually really wasn't true.
You never learn, do you?
Fergie had a love of foreign holidays,
particularly skiing.
She's renowned as the finest skier in the royal family,
and today only the best amongst her party could keep close to her.
Can't get any closer, we'll fall over.
CHARLES: Hang on a minute.
In Switzerland, the two royal couples posed for the press.
Again, it looked like the Duchess was a poor influence on Diana.
They were on a slope of a mountain and it was snowing,
and Diana was slipping a bit,
and then Diana and Fergie slipped into each other sort of on purpose.
Oh, I'm slipping. Oh!
They were really larking about,
and they were just wonderful pictures.
Did you get that?
And then Charles got annoyed because he thought it was undignified.
That came back to haunt Fergie, those photographs.
FEMALE NARRATOR: It wasn't all bad press.
Sir, have you managed to name your baby yet?
No names.
Was it quite an ordeal yesterday? It was a long time, wasn't it?
It was a long time, but she came through it very, very well.
You looked very worried earlier in the day, sir?
Ah, that's because I was on my way to the dentist.
(LAUGHTER)
Two years after their marriage,
the Yorks celebrated the birth of their daughter, Beatrice.
Eugenie followed two years later.
TOWN CRIER: God save the Queen.
Our wishes to both the baby, to the father and the mother.
But the happy families didn't last long.
Prince Andrew was away at sea for many weeks of the year.
His posting follows three months of specialised training,
and the Duke will now lead a flight team aboard the frigate
for around 18 months.
In the early years of their marriage, Andrew was serving
as a Naval officer, which meant that he was frequently sent away.
And for Sarah that meant being at home
at the palace on her own for long periods of time.
And, in fact, she later recalled that she got to see her husband
for 40 days a year.
The rest of the time, he was absent.
It's terrible.
I mean, you're going away and leaving what you love behind.
It's a fantastic job for a single man.
It's getting less and less so for a married man.
The new mother was lonely and lacking support.
In 1992, private photos surfaced.
REPORTER: A cleaner found a set of holiday snaps
showing the Duchess and her two children
with a Texan, Steve Wyatt.
Wyatt was handsome and attentive.
The pictures had been taken
some two years previously.
There's a picture of Steve Wyatt,
and then there's Beatrice, who's just got bathers on, just...
And they're obviously somewhere hot,
and suddenly people think,
"Who is this man with little princess Beatrice,
"who looks about two or three?"
And so then the stories start.
Eve Pollard, a tabloid editor at the time,
was contacted by a mutual friend of the Duchess.
A very old friend of ours rang us up.
He said, "I wonder if you could come
"and give a friend of mine a bit of advice."
So, we turned up in his lovely studio in Mayfair,
and there she was.
We tried to say, you know,
"You've just got to be careful about any photographs.
"If you go out with anybody while your husband's away,
it should be a crowd.
And she was, at that time,
I have to say, very, very unhappy about the fact that she was alone.
Gossip of affairs
circulated in society circles for months.
She was also getting a lot of flak from the royal household
for behaving, as they saw it, inappropriately.
So, everything was mounting up against her,
and I don't think Andrew was there to really back her up.
And then along comes Steve Wyatt.
It was the beginning of the end for Fergie and Andrew.
The announcement that the Duchess of York
had initiated discussions about a separation from her husband
came as she arrived to pick up their daughter from school.
In March, 1992, the couple split.
Fergie was soon spotted with another American, John Bryan,
a friend of Wyatt's, and her financial advisor.
Soon rumours of scandalous photos of them together surfaced,
and the photos were being touted around Fleet Street.
The night before publication,
I went to see Bryan and I sort of laid down these pictures,
and there was a great intake of breath.
"Oh, God."
And he immediately went off into the bathroom, shut the door.
And even though the door was locked, I could hear he was calling Sarah
in Scotland and telling her that it was worse,
far worse than he'd thought.
He obviously was a little bit more than a financial advisor,
as we saw from those photographs taken in the south of France,
with him sucking her toes.
Whether he was looking at the toes as a new form of abacus
or calculator remains to be seen,
but it was the, sort of, nail in the coffin
when it came to Fergie and Andrew's marriage.
It was a sell-out scoop for the 'Daily Mirror'.
300,000 extra copies were printed,
and, as the public snapped them up, the newspaper was unrepentant.
Unfortunately for Sarah Ferguson,
she was staying with her in-laws at Balmoral.
The papers were all laid out for breakfast.
Sarah took one look around the dining room and thought,
"There but the grace of God go the lot of you, I'm going."
So, she went back upstairs and, obviously,
she had to see the Queen,
and the Queen, remember, these two are fairly close,
and the Queen was furious with her, just furious.
Speculation about the Duchess of York increased
when a car sped out of the royal estate full of suitcases.
She fled the castle and the press.
No longer the luxury or privilege of an aircraft of the Queen's flight
for the Duchess, just an ordinary scheduled flight to Heathrow.
It spelled the end of Fergie's life as a royal,
and that was absolutely devastating for her.
It was never how she had expected things to turn out.
The most important thing for me at the moment is to keep a low profile,
work hard
and make sure that I continue to find cures,
and to help people as much as possible.
But, with no wealthy husband, how was she going to live?
The debts soon racked up.
I wouldn't say she'd go anywhere for a hot meal,
but she was prepared to put her name to all sorts of things,
which royals hadn't done.
She needed money fast.
I'm trying to attract a bit of attention.
Her solution for bringing in the cash...
Cheers.
..was a flashy one.
FEMALE NARRATOR: The Duke and Duchess of York
announced their divorce in May 1996.
By August that year, Sarah Ferguson
was no longer able to use the title Her Royal Highness.
REPORTER: Are you separated? Are the reports true, ma'am?
She found it awkward to adjust to a modest lifestyle.
Living beyond her means quickly got her into financial difficulty.
You know, she's cast out of the royal family,
and she doesn't just divorce Andrew,
she divorces the whole of the royal family.
I remember Diana saying to me
that, you know, Fergie didn't get that much.
You know, she really... she really didn't,
and that's why she had to work so hard,
and she had to keep coming up with new ideas.
In typical fashion, she made light of the negative press.
It really bugs me
that, every day, every day,
I have to read that I'm a millionairess three times over.
Cor, I tell you. (LAUGHTER)
REPORTER: When her marriage broke down,
her overdraft was said to have been 200,000 pounds,
allegedly paid off under a separation settlement,
which also involved Prince Andrew
taking financial responsibility for their children,
Beatrice and Eugenie.
The news reports varied.
At first, she said the Royals gave her no financial support at all.
Then she admitted to receiving 15,000 pounds a year.
It was then reported that the divorce settlement from Prince Andrew
was worth several million pounds.
We got two Dalmatians.
Later, it seemed to emerge that actually she had a settlement
around, sort of, 3 million pounds.
So, I think it's likely that the divorce settlement
was much more favourable than, perhaps, Fergie initially suggested.
We've never known the full details,
but we think she was meant to get money to buy a home,
but I think probably she was so much in debt by then
she just used the money to pay off her debt.
That's what I understand.
In 1996, it was thought
Sarah Ferguson's debts stood at around 1 million pounds.
Just over a year later,
her debts were reported to be in the region of 4 million pounds.
She had no concept of money coming in
as opposed to money going out.
About 300,000 pound went on her staff costs.
150,000 pounds she would spend in a year on gifts.
She travelled a lot.
Those were expensive costs.
The simple fact was that she spent more than she had,
and she rapidly got into serious debt.
I think that's the story of her life, really.
She just is a very free spender and very, very generous.
But, if you're like that, you know,
you do get into financial trouble
unless you're earning millions all the time.
Sarah did have money problems, that was well advertised everywhere,
and she wasn't ashamed of that.
You know, she got up out of bed
and thought, "Right, I've got to make some money here."
Fergie tried to earn a living.
She knew she had cachet as a former royal.
She also knew the best place to sell herself.
('STAR-SPANGLED BANNER' PLAYS)
She attempted to re-brand in the United States.
I'm so unconventional that, instead of serving tea,
I serve Ocean Spray Cranapple juice drink.
She made this series of cranberry juice commercials for American TV,
and is said to have pocketed half a million dollars.
It has a distinctive taste that gives you real zing.
No wonder you Americans threw that tea into the harbour.
The Americans, God bless them, they love people with titles.
If you're a Lord, well, yeah, you're pretty good.
But, if you're a Duchess, wow, you've, sort of, hit the jackpot.
She'd been married to the son of The Queen,
and was prepared to endorse brands.
So, for PR companies in the States, their Christmases had come early.
They saw her as this really feisty pioneer woman, you know,
she was really brave to carry on and go and make her own money.
They loved that.
Sarah Ferguson also teamed up with Weight Watchers,
publicised through another set of glamorous TV commercials.
It's the hardest thing in the world, staying on a diet.
While no-one knows what Fergie earned,
during their 11-year association,
she lost 50 pounds in weight.
I think it probably connected with a lot of women,
because, whether you're a princess or a commoner,
we know how painful it is
when people make cruel jibes about our appearances.
Fergie also signed endorsement deals
with cosmetic companies and makers of fine tableware.
She was a spokesperson for Waterford china and ceramics.
She was a spokesperson for Avon make-up.
Brands wanted access to Sarah's royal connections,
and the kudos that that would bring to their brands.
So, she, you know, she was hot ticket.
She was really in demand.
Fergie was a success in America.
By February, 1997,
she was on the verge of paying off her creditors.
REPORTER: She was a Duchess in debt,
but tomorrow Sarah Ferguson will announce
she's close to paying off her overdraft with Coutts Bank,
around 4 million pounds of it.
Then, in 1998,
Fergie landed a plum guest role
in one of America's most successful sitcoms, 'Friends'.
♪ I'll be there for you... ♪
The fourth-season finale of the worldwide hit TV show
was watched by 20 million viewers in America,
and nearly 7 million in the UK.
Filming brought the 'Friends' cast to London for a major wedding storyline.
The character Joey photographed Chandler outside Westminster Abbey.
Then who should turn up among the stars but the Duchess of York?
They may call it a bit part in the business,
but she could have been paid as much as 900 pounds
for an hour's performance.
Joey says you don't really like his hat,
but I think it's kind of dashing.
(LAUGHTER)
The fact that Sarah famously appeared as herself
on an episode of US TV sitcom 'Friends',
I think, was a key, positive moment for her.
Appearing on the episode of 'Friends' for some people
would be, you know, the ultimate kind of cult appearance,
and I'm sure her daughters thought it was amazing.
It's Fergie, baby!
But, you know, this was not becoming
of a former royal princess to appear on, you know,
an American sitcom.
Of course, really, if she'd had any kind of royal status,
she certainly wouldn't have been allowed
to have performed in 'Friends'.
I think, actually, out of all the TV projects that she did,
the British public warmed to her for doing this one.
You know, this wasn't hugely embarrassing.
Even so, Fergie had profited from her royal status.
The royals put their names to organisations and charities.
Sarah was using it to make money, which upset the royals terribly.
Making money from her royal status was one thing,
but Fergie went a step further,
and cashed in on the story of her royal private life.
The fact that she went out into the commercial world,
as long as she wasn't besmirching the royal family,
wasn't trading on secrets and telling stories out of school,
that they had to live with it.
But as soon as you start, sort of, saying things
that patently aren't true, then that is upsetting.
Sarah Ferguson published her autobiography, 'My Story', in 1996.
She told the world
that she had been made to feel unwelcome in Buckingham Palace,
and revealed secrets about the breakdown of her marriage
to Prince Andrew.
The Queen is said to have been particularly displeased,
as is Princess Margaret and Prince Phillip.
So, the real big guns in the royal family
are really, really upset by all of this.
A new book meant a promotional tour,
and Fergie was off back to America.
Oprah Winfrey was among the broadcasters
who leant a sympathetic ear.
You were sitting in the palace,
and you felt a sense of hatred for yourself.
That doesn't compute in our Princess Cinderella Duchess mind,
you understand?
But that is the fairy-tale?
That is the fairy-tale. Uh-huh.
But then comes the realism
that you actually didn't marry to get the fairy-tale,
you married a man, you fell in love and you married the man,
and then you've got to come to terms with the fairy-tale.
There was a certain amount of sympathy for her
in the United States.
"Poor Fergie, poor Fergie,"
whinging about how she was badly treated at Buckingham Palace,
which is a bit rich,
but Buckingham Palace weren't going to react to that.
So, when you moved into the palace, were you surprised?
I mean, the way you described... as you described it in the book,
I'm thinking it's a little dark room down the hall at Buckingham Palace.
Um, yes, it's on the second floor.
It's all burgundy and very dark.
And the light bulbs are only 30 amps do they don't provide any light.
Not only was she cashing in on her own royal status,
she was lifting the lid on being inside the royal family,
letting the public in, and that's a big no-no.
Despite selling her royal secrets,
Fergie remained on good terms with Prince Andrew.
His active service in the Navy was coming to an end,
and a new controversial chapter in his life was about to start.
Since 1997, he's worked in London for the Navy's diplomacy unit.
Now that he's on Civvy Street,
Andrew is going to be a roving ambassador
promoting British trade overseas.
Fergie's ongoing quest to make money played out in the media,
but there were more PR disasters on the horizon,
and, this time, a scandal of epic proportions.
She'd done something very, very stupid.
I think she really had to lay her soul bare
in order to, sort of, exonerate herself from what she'd done.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Though Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson
were no longer married,
they maintained a close friendship after their divorce.
They always stayed friends, which is...
I know people don't get it and say, "How is this?"
This is very unusual and it is rare,
but it's a very special relationship
and they get on extraordinarily well.
They have the same sense of humour.
In 2008, Fergie moved in to share Andrew's home,
the Royal Lodge in Windsor.
Their friendship has intrigued royal watchers.
They're the couple who, you know,
they might not have the label of being husband and wife,
but they're definitely kind of soulmates, I think.
Soulmates whose friendship brought its own problems.
The next disaster to hit would rock not only Andrew and Fergie,
but the whole royal family.
The Fake Sheikh was called Mazher Mahmoud
who worked for 'The News of the World'.
He kept saying he wanted to meet Prince Andrew
and he would pay her half a million
if she could fix that.
Posing as an Arab businessman,
Mahmood had played out hundreds of undercover stings
on high profile personalities since the early '90s.
Victims were cajoled into making embarrassing confessions
or trading illegal substances.
The 'Fake Sheikh' operations were often criticised as entrapment.
He would do these meetings at the Savoy, the Dorchester,
all these glitzy places.
Um, and you know,
so many celebrities, um, and other royals got stung by him.
Fergie was likely targeted because of her well-publicised money problems -
and her friendship with her ex-husband.
By 2010, Prince Andrew had retired from his successful naval career
and had a new role, as a special trade envoy for Britain.
'The News of the World' set up a sting to secretly record Fergie.
Despite the grainy and low quality footage,
she can be heard offering access to Prince Andrew.
What she was proposing and what she was saying she could do,
and using Prince Andrew, basically,
to shake down some money
from a man who she thought was a very rich, uh, foreign investor,
but in fact was an undercover journalist.
It's one thing to be, um, you know, trading off the fact
or the fact that you had once been a member of the royal family,
but what is not really appropriate
is the fact that you're no longer a member of the Royal family,
that your ex-husband has a sort of governmental, ambassadorial role
and you're offering access for huge amounts of, of cash.
Prince Andrew knew absolutely nothing about what was going on.
This is something that Fergie had arranged all by herself
and was going to present it as a fait accompli.
Uh, but you know,
you don't sell a member of the royal family for cash.
But the Fake Sheikh had caught far worse on camera.
After agreeing she would be paid
her half-a-million-pound fee by wire transfer,
Fergie was seen accepting a cash deposit
of just under 30 thousand pounds.
REPORTER: She left the ill-fated rendezvous
with a suitcase containing the cash.
She'll give it back, but her reputation is in tatters.
When you looked at it, she was obviously distressed.
She was smoking, she was drinking
and he was there with this suitcase of money.
WOMAN: I think out of all of the embarrassing deals,
this was the most serious.
Andrew had no option
but to completely distance himself from this,
it was very embarrassing for the royal family.
In 2016, the Fake Sheikh was himself exposed as a law-breaker.
He was found guilty of perverting the course of justice
after tampering with police evidence.
Did you lie to get a front page headline?
What do you say to that?
Mr Mahmoud, what's your reaction?!
Mahmoud was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in prison.
But his sting on Fergie had done its damage.
SEWARD: She apologised to the Queen, she apologised to Prince Andrew
and she's got this extraordinary ability to bounce back
and she did bounce back.
KAY: Prince Andrew, you know, stood by her.
And it was Andrew who sort of came to the rescue,
uh, and set up a program
whereby Fergie could repay some of the debts,
um, and that's how Fergie got through that episode.
Fergie made a public apology.
Fergie had to try and defend herself
and, uh, you know, in typical Fergie fashion,
she went onto the networks to do it.
She went on to the Oprah Winfrey Show
and reflected with Oprah on what had happened.
They watched a playback of the entire Fake Sheikh video
before Fergie made dramatic revelations
about her state of mind.
I was in the gutter at that moment.
So I know exactly, I'm very aware,
of the fact I'd been drinking, that I was not in my right place.
You know, people love Oprah, and I believe that by speaking to Oprah,
Sarah felt that it could have a positive impact on her.
She really had to lay her soul bare,
um, in order to sort of exonerate herself from what she'd done.
And it was extraordinary that she did it,
it was a very, very brave thing to do.
But then, she'd done something very, very stupid.
It was kind of like the ultimate collision
of a royal and reality television.
So of course, you know, people loved it in America.
You have to, you have to respect her for that
because that really takes guts to be able to do that.
I think I'm authentically myself sitting here right now.
And I'm gonna give it a good shot.
Somehow or other, she managed to turn the tables.
I don't think she meant it to be,
but it turned out to be an absolute master stroke.
In the years following the Fake Sheikh scandal,
Sarah Ferguson claimed
she had lost around 40 million pounds' worth of earnings
from cancelled celebrity engagements
because her reputation was so damaged.
She started legal proceedings
against the owners of 'The News of the World',
but it's reported that after three years,
she abandoned her case in 2019.
It's unfortunate that she was caught in a sting,
but not the first one to be caught in a sting.
Uh, and certainly probably won't be the last one.
She realised very quickly
that she was up against some serious legal opposition
and that if it went against her...
I mean, the costs could have run higher and higher.
So sensibly, she, she dropped the case.
Despite the constant gaffes and disasters,
Sarah Ferguson was still close to Prince Andrew -
each still supportive of the other.
They were so close that some royal watchers
believe a reunion could be on the cards.
I think Sarah and Andrew are together as a couple.
I just don't think they could be apart from each other.
and I do see them getting married again.
I really do.
FEMALE NARRATOR: Disaster after disaster.
But remarkably, Andrew and Fergie remained close.
KAY: It has to be the most extraordinary relationship
there's ever been of a member of the royal family.
Andrew and Sarah married in 1986, split up in 1992,
were divorced in 1996
and yet have remained together happily ever after.
Sarah refers to Andrew has her 'bestest friend',
her knight in shining armour.
Andrew and I speak every day
and it's very important that we do keep,
you know, keep that huge friendship.
They may have divorced 24 years ago,
but the pair still live together.
They have their holidays together.
They have a home they bought together in Switzerland,
a skiing lodge,
and in fact, they now spend most of their time together.
It is interesting that neither of them have really found anyone else
since their divorce,
And I think even though they're not formally married,
I think they kind of are together, like, in an emotional sense.
Their intertwined lives have raised many questions
about their relationship.
There are constant rumours and endless speculation
about the possibility of them one day remarrying.
And I think largely fuelled by the pair of them
speaking so openly and fondly about each other.
No, we're not married, and we're very happy with the way things are.
No benefit for him? Nothing going on there?
Carl! I don't know.
No! People have needs.
Really.
CUNDY: I think Sarah and Andrew are together as a couple.
And I do see them getting married again.
I really do.
But Fergie has repeatedly embarrassed the royal family –
so could she ever be accepted back?
Fergie did upset a lot of people.
I mean, chiefly among them, I would say Prince Philip.
Nothing would ever happen while
the Duke of Edinburgh is still alive,
such is the grudge that he still bears against Sarah.
Fergie may never be able to win over her former father-in-law,
but it does appear
that the Queen is slowly welcoming Fergie back into the royal fold.
The Queen still has a soft spot for Fergie.
And very occasionally Fergie's invited up to a Balmoral.
After the Duchess was excluded from William and Kate's wedding,
a sign of acceptance was the invitation to Harry and Meghan's.
CUNDY: She was so excited to be there as well
and be part of the family again.
She was ousted for a long time and I think she found that very sad.
Regardless of their marital status,
the Yorks continue to present themselves as a family unit,
the prince, Fergie, and the two princesses -
and all four attract ridicule.
How do I look?
Like a puppet of the bourgeois oppressors.
Perfect. See you later.
Beatrice's hat, which was unusual,
was compared with everything from a loo seat to a pretzel.
Just like her mother, Beatrice shrugged off the ridicule
and put the hat up for auction,
raising 81,000 pounds for charity.
It's also been noted that the princesses
have inherited their parents' love of the high life.
Beatrice and Eugenie seem to spend an awful lot of time
travelling at someone else's expense, usually.
It often involves private planes or luxury boats.
But they do both now have full time jobs.
Beatrice is the vice president for a software company in the States
and Eugenie has a senior position at an art gallery in Mayfair.
They want to work.
They don't want to be accused
of being lazy or leeching off the taxpayer.
Fergie and her daughters sought the attention.
Prince Andrew, on the other hand, had grown up to simply expect it.
He was a Prince and expected to be treated like one.
On leaving the navy in 2001, Prince Andrew took on a new role.
He was given a pretty plum role.
He was made a special representative
for trade and investment,
which essentially saw him travelling around the world
representing Britain.
POLLARD: From the beginning it was all going very, very well.
And people were quite interested
all over the world meeting the queen's son.
ARBITER: Where he fell down is that at the end of the day,
when work was over, he went off to play.
But you don't play at the taxpayer's expense.
It was noted that his trips abroad, supposedly on government business,
seemed to go via ski slopes, top golf courses
and other exotic locations.
He wasn't called 'Air Miles' Andy for nothing.
You know, this is the, this is the man who saw fit
to take a helicopter ride from Windsor to Kent
to play golf at a cost of 5,000 pounds to the taxpayers.
The Duke's travel expenses were four million pounds
over his decade in the role,
and his security costs, another 10 million.
What is an extravagant lifestyle?
MAN: Travelling by private jet.
Using helicopters when you could take a train.
But again, it is the maximisation of my time
for the best value for money,
and that's the way that...
And I'm not the one that makes those decisions.
Yet more terrible publicity for the Yorks.
Once again, they appeared to shame the royal family.
He can't sort of... like his wife, he can't step outside himself
and say, "How does this look?"
It did seem to become a little convoluted
between what was for Britain and what was for Andrew.
Prince Andrew was plagued with controversy.
In 2007, the Duke and Duchess of York's marital home,
Sunninghill Park, was sold.
It had been a gift from the Queen,
and the unusual circumstances surrounding the sale
prompted further criticism about Andrew's business dealings.
When their marriage broke down,
and it came to selling the house,
it took a long, long time, and Andrew was desperate to sell it
because he needed the money.
I think it had been on the market for several years.
Quite remarkably, he managed to sell it to a Kazakh billionaire
who not only bought it,
but bought it for three million pounds over the asking price.
The buyer was the son-in-law of the former Kazakh president.
He paid 15 million pounds for the property,
despite then apparently leaving it empty for eight years.
Not a brick of it remains to this day.
It was bulldozed to the ground.
It was later reported that Andrew
had tried to help the Kazakh oligarch become a client of Coutts,
the bank used by the royal family.
And the controversy kept on coming.
It appeared that the prince simply didn't care what people thought –
from his meetings with Colonel Gaddafi's son,
to holidays with a convicted Libyan gun smuggler.
He seems to delight in these relationships.
And it's said it's because he's drawn...
very much drawn to power and wealth.
But one of Andrew's friendships
would prove more damaging than them all.
I mean, this is so much more serious
than Randy Andy, Air Miles Andy.
This is a criminal case.
FEMALE NARRATOR: For over a decade, Prince Andrew has been engulfed
in the biggest controversy of his royal life,
that's been beset with scandals.
Andrew met Jeffrey Epstein roundabout 1999
through Ghislaine Maxwell, whom he'd known for years -
Ghislaine was a girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein was very, very anxious
to have somebody like Andrew as his friend,
because he's got a real live Prince and it gave him so much kudos.
I think round about 2000,
he went to St James and the British Virgin Islands,
on Epstein's private jet
and had made several trips as a guest of Jeffrey Epstein.
His love of the life was what attracted him to Ghislaine Maxwell.
And he invited her to parties at the palace,
he invited her shooting at Sandringham,
always with Epstein in tow.
Two months before Epstein attended
Beatrice's 18th birthday party,
a warrant was issued for him
over the sexual assault of a minor.
The fact that he had invited Epstein to Sandringham,
he'd invited Epstein to Windsor castle
as a guest of the queen,
it says a lot for the man's judgment.
Epstein served 13 months in prison
for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
Two years later in 2010,
Prince Andrew was photographed walking with him in Central Park
during a four-night stay at his New York mansion.
He claimed that he went over there
to say that they could no longer be friends.
Well, what's wrong with email, what's wrong with a telephone call?
It was also revealed
that Sarah Ferguson had accepted a loan from Epstein.
The Duchess quickly admitted her mistake stating:
The story exploded.
Prince Andrew was accused of sexual misconduct.
It was a wicked time in my life.
It was a really scary time in my life.
I had just been abused by a member of a royal family.
She alleges that she was forced to sleep with Prince Andrew
when she was under age.
A very serious allegation. It's one which Prince Andrew denies.
Epstein committed suicide in jail in 2019.
Prince Andrew has strongly denied the accusations made against him.
And he made a rare and very controversial interview
from inside Buckingham Palace.
Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein?
Um, er...
Now, still not.
And the reason being
is that the people that I met
and the opportunities that I was given to learn,
either by him or because of him,
were actually very useful.
The fact that, as reported,
that he said to the queen that it had gone well,
it gives a very clear indication of the man's poor lack of judgment.
Prince Andrew's interview was widely criticised.
This was one disaster too many.
Days after the interview, Andrew stepped down from royal duties.
There have been many ups and downs for Sarah and for Andrew,
but, you know, for the Duke of York
to essentially be forced into an early retirement
to step down as a senior royal,
is a sign of just how serious this is.
QUINN: He can't do any charities.
Virtually everyone who had anything to do with him has now dropped him.
Following the interview,
Prince Andrew's team released a statement
saying, "The Duke of York expressed his regret
"for his ill-judged association with Jeffery Epstein."
But the story just won't go away.
Three weeks ago,
former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested.
She denies the charges against her, and any wrongdoing.
American authorities previously made a formal request
for Prince Andrew to speak to them as part of their inquiries.
They claim their requests have been repeatedly denied.
While Andrew's lawyers say his offers of help
were effectively rejected.
There are clearly questions that need to be answered.
And you know, we have yet to see
whether the Duke
is going to cooperate.
Well, there are precious few people standing by him,
I have to say, as, as time goes on,
more of Andrew's support has sort of melted away,
but there is one solid support and it's Sarah.
Sarah Ferguson has defended her ex-husband in television interviews,
newspaper articles and on her social media.
It is just shockingly accusatory lies
which I won't stand by and let anybody believe or...
I just have to shut it down right now.
She knows she's going to get a lot of criticism
for standing by Andrew at the moment.
But that's what she does.
She's so loyal and she'll do anything to protect her family.
Andrew stood by Sarah when she was in trouble.
He was remarkably patient - and she is now standing by him.
I think they're in a bubble.
I think they've both had so much controversy,
it's them against the world.
When you grow up in the royal family,
especially Andrew, who was spoiled by his mother,
Charles is much more sensitive,
much more aware and worried about how he appears to the public.
Andrew was cosseted.
He was the favourite son
and the Queen brought him up to think he could do no wrong.
Surrounded by controversy,
the future of the couple is uncertain.
One of the side effects of Andrew's standing down from royal life
is that he instantly lost a means of earning a living.
And all the indications are he will never come back as a working royal.
FEMALE NARRATOR: But if anyone can bounce back,
it's surely Fergie.
Again and again, she's experienced humiliation.
The one thing that Sarah won't lose
is that capacity to surprise all of us.
She has done some really impressive charity work
and, um, you know, her children's books have done well.
She's trying to forge out a new career in the film industry.
I would say 'never say never' with Sarah.
Every day, I'm going to do Storytime with Fergie and Friends.
Fergie now has another project.
She's been reading stories for children online
during the coronavirus lockdown.
Let's get a bit of magic going, shall we?
She's been really personable
and she's really showing her human side.
I think it's such a positive initiative.
For Andrew – his future might rest more on his ex-wife
than he could ever have imagined.
SEAN: Only recently, there was a picture put up on social media
of himself and Fergie packing together lunches
to deliver to local nurses and stuff.
So he's trying to do some good,
but again, whatever you put up in this situation is ridiculed.
Will it ever be possible for Fergie and Andrew
to shake off the mistakes of their past?
The scandal from Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein is so toxic
and I do feel that that is going to kind of tarnish her
and the fact that she's still so close to Prince Andrew,
I think that is going to have quite a limiting effect on
big future sort of commercial projects.
The story of Andrew and Fergie is a sequence of disasters.
She sought out attention and indulgence she just couldn't afford.
He mistook deference for friendship.
His judgement clouded by his status.
Throughout there has been one constant.
The Duke and Duchess of Disaster have stayed side by side.
The next chapter of their lives are going to be very,
very different to what's gone before.
I think they're going to have to maybe try and enjoy
the simpler things in life.
And to be honest, they may not have a huge amount of choice.
It wouldn't surprise me at all,
if we get an announcement that they're getting married again.
Nothing really would surprise me with Fergie and Andrew.