WITH everything that’s going on in the world right now, news that the former Duchess of York was planning to clone the late Queen’s corgis might not seem the most important talking point.
Indeed, it wasn’t even the most important Sarah Ferguson story in Sunday’s papers, which also carried calls from the United States for her to give evidence about her links to Jeffrey Epstein.
But the ridiculous dog story – all the more ridiculous for being totally true – perhaps tells us all we need to know about a woman for whom, according to one royal commentator, “everything is a commodity to be monetised”.
She genuinely did approach a TV production company about cloning the dogs left in her care when Queen Elizabeth died, with a view to selling the offspring.
This is par for the course for someone who has wrung every pound and dollar she possibly could out of her royal connections – and then almost immediately spent it all. She makes Meghan Sussex look like a complete amateur. But while she was travelling around the world hawking everything from books to weight-loss programmes to tea sets, she was treated like a joke.
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Even when Ferguson was caught in a sting offering cash for access to her ex-husband, she was viewed as an individual embarrassment, a silly spendthrift rather than someone calculating and corrupt.
The corgi headlines might have raised a few sniggers and rolls of the eyes at the weekend, but the behaviour of the “Yorks” is not remotely funny any more.
Headlines about “air miles Andy” took on a new meaning after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The nickname “Randy Andy” feels sinister rather than irreverent, knowing what we now do about his close connections to sex offender Epstein and the claims against him made by the late Virginia Giuffre.
There is no defending the appalling past tabloid scrutiny of Sarah’s weight (she was branded “Duchess of Pork” and “Fat Fergie”, and has said this contributed to her disordered eating), and this formed part of a portrayal of her as undignified, unstylish and gauche.
But few will have seen her money-grabbing behaviour as evidence of a ruthlessness so absolute that she would take her princess daughters to visit a convicted child sex offender days after his release from prison.
Andrew’s decade-long unpaid position as the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment allowed him to forge personal connections with leaders of the kinds of unsavoury regimes that were most keen to have royal visits.
He should of course face personal scrutiny for all of his actions during this period, but any reasonable person might ask why an essentially random individual – appointed to the role thanks to an accident of birth – should have been representing the UK at all, let alone able to use state-funded resources to facilitate golf trips and personal business meetings.
According to many of the accounts provided to Andrew Lownie, author of the biography Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, his behaviour was often rude and unpleasant, and he was frequently distracted from the work he was supposed to be doing by his pursuit of women.
Why, then, was he able to keep doing this for a decade?
What a ludicrous situation, in which the British people simply have to trust that royal glitter will bring benefits for businesses, even if the individual charged with the sprinkling can’t be bothered half the time and is associating with God knows who in his personal life.
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For decades the sex scandal most associated with the Yorks was the supposed “toe-sucking” incident of 1992 when Sarah, newly separated from Andrew, was photographed sunbathing topless with a new love interest.
This reportedly prompted Princess Margaret to write to her declaring: “You have done more to bring shame on the family than could ever have been imagined.” That was a bit of a cheek given her own similar scandal 20 years earlier, and also demonstrated extreme poverty of imagination. The royals have long regarded Sarah as a liability – and will be on high alert as rumours swirl that she may sit down not to give sworn testimony to the US Congress, but for a “tell-all” interview.
They will do whatever they can to distance themselves from Andrew, Sarah and any other family members they deem tainted, but it was the institution of monarchy itself that facilitated all of their behaviour.
The late Queen not only paid off hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt for Sarah, but allegedly funded the lion’s share of Andrew’s £12 million settlement with Giuffre.
Yet royal funds are apparently unavailable to pay for a Scottish memorial to this enabler, who was either blind to the glaring flaws of her son or thought his exploitation of his royal status appropriate.
The removal of these two rotten apples is not a solution. The whole barrel is tainted, the jig is up, the royal glitter reeks of mould. Let the King fund a memorial himself, if we must have one.
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