Will Fergie ever forgive herself? Wednesday, 15 June 2005 SOMETIMES the camera can get you at just the wrong angle. And when it's the wrong time and at the wrong place, then you're pretty much guaranteed a picture fit for burning. Such was the fate of the Duchess of York this week, when she blundered into the path of waiting paparazzi as she tottered out of Boujis nightclub in South Kensington at 3.30am.
The cameras clicked and the paparazzi had their picture -- hollow-eyed, deathly pale, a trick of the light giving her a decidedly haunted look.
You had to feel for Fergie. One night on the town with a niece and her friends and the fallout is captured for posterity. For Fergie, it was particularly mortifying because she lives in a perennial state of anxiety about upsetting the Royal Family, and particularly Her Majesty (as she likes to call the Queen).
The Duchess has been divorced from Prince Andrew for nine years, but is in an ongoing state of self-inflicted penance for the horrors -- toe-sucking and all -- she inflicted on the Royal Family in the early Nineties and which marked a pivotal moment in their history.
She has paid off the £ 4 million overdraft she'd accumulated, raised two lovely, impeccably-mannered girls, has forged her own successful career as 'ambassador' for WeightWatchers in America -- and all the while kept her head down.
She had been at back-to-back meetings all day long, then on to a modern art party, where she was supporting her old friend, sculptress Aly Brown, then to dinner, before she turned up at Boujis with her young friends, including her 19-year- old niece, Ayesha Makim.
Indeed, Fergie must be permanently jet-lagged. She spends two weeks in every month in the States, flying from one place to another to address people in her role as ambassador for WeightWatchers.
Friends say she has received many offers for work in Britain -- Volkswagen were interested in her advertising for them -- but she will not break her vow never again knowingly to embarrass the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family.
The Americans still think she is royal, and they bow and scrape and curtsy in a way which Fergie, who craves love and affection, finds irresistible.
But once she's done one of her 'super-meetings' -- motivational talks to around 2,000 women at a time -- it's back to yet another anonymous hotel, usually somewhere in the American Midwest, for room service and a TV supper.
It's a lonely job, and those who meet Fergie for the first time are struck immediately by just how alone she seems. She is paid most handsomely for her work -- reportedly £2 million a year -- but friends point out that WeightWatchers 'get their pound of flesh'.
'She is up at 4am every day doing radio and television interviews back to back, as well as personal appearances and business dinners in the evening,' says a friend.
'Often, she doesn't fall into bed until midnight. It's absolutely exhausting and really far from glamorous.
'I think what last week's picture shows more than anything is just how very, very tired she is. Sarah is a real trooper -- she always wants to do things herself rather than delegate -- but it is starting to take its toll.'
Her reward is an enviably trim size eight to ten figure. But recently, as that picture of her showed with shocking clarity, she's been looking just a little gaunt -- haggard even. Putting on a few pounds wouldn't do any harm at all.
Friends worry about her. 'It's fair to say she's obsessed with her weight -- even though friends tell her that she doesn't need to be so hard on herself,' says the source.
Invariably dressed in black Dolce and Gabbana, looking chic in a New York power-dressed sort of way, one senses it isn't really her. Conforming again -- against type -- to please everyone else.
She works so hard partly to seek approval. As one friend puts it: 'She has spent the past 15 years making amends for her mistakes, and will continue to do so.'
Not that Sarah, who received just £300,000 from her divorce settlement from Andrew in 1996, can afford to stop. She needs the work.
'At one point, she did reconsider going back to re-negotiate the settlement,' says a friend. 'But she did not want to cause any further embarrassment to the Queen and, in the end, decided to walk away with a resigned smile.'
Back in Britain, she has her adored girls, but no husband. At 45, she would dearly love to be happily settled with a man again.
For four years, post-Andrew, she had an on/off relationship with Italian Count Gaddo della Gherardesca, but it simply drifted before they split up for good.
Today, she says she is single, but sources close to her say this is not strictly true: that she is, in fact, still seeing Rupert Beckwith-Smith, with whom she was linked a few years ago, but has been sworn by him to secrecy.
After one newspaper report a few months ago about the romance, the Duchess's spokeswoman issued a swift denial, and the Duchess and her people continue vehemently to deny any romantic involvement.
Beckwith-Smith is the brother of her best friend and old flatmate Carolyn Cotterell, who died of cancer four years ago.
Why Beckwith-Smith does not wish his friendship with the Duchess to be made public is not clear, but it must be hard even for Sarah -- who endeavours to look on the bright side of everything -- to find a positive take on this. And it's likely that she finds it deeply hurtful. Who wouldn't?
And then there is the question of where her home is. The friend says that since she maintained her own suite of rooms at Sunninghill Park in Berkshire -- Andrew's and Sarah's former 'South York' marital residence -- there was really no need to rent the cottage in Windlesham, Surrey, which she kept up until a few months ago.
It was precisely because of Beckwith-Smith, a 45-year-old racing driver turned painter, that she had continued to do so. For it was a place they could meet discreetly, uninterrupted by prying eyes.
'It suited Sarah to keep the cottage because she could hardly take Rupert to Sunninghill, where Andrew was living, not to mention all the staff. It is not a situation of Sarah's choosing. She adores Rupert and would like things to become serious between them, but for whatever reason he won't go public with her.
'They were first linked a few years ago and pictured soon afterwards. Rupert was furious and ended it, and Sarah was distraught. She persuaded him to come back -- but on his terms.
'Now that Sarah has given up her cottage, she goes up to his place in Northamptonshire. The only time they ever go out is to country pubs, where they know they'll be left alone and not be photographed.
'It's hardly ideal, and you have to ask yourself the question, where is it all heading?'
Nowhere would appear to be the answer. Perhaps Beckwith-Smith is unable to contemplate taking on the Duchess's rather heavy 'baggage'.
No one is more aware than the Duchess herself of the weight of that load. 'Sarah has often spoken forlornly of how difficult it is, given her lifestyle and the "baggage" that she comes with,' says a friend.
Sarah will not go with them, although a suite of rooms is being renovated for her so she can continue the arrangement she currently has at Sunninghill -- not being permanently based there, but able to come and go as she pleases. It is doubtful that some of the more senior members of the Royal Family will approve, but Sarah does continue to exert considerable influence over her ex-husband.
Still, it works both ways. Andrew may be weak and lazy, but he is the Queen's son, and if ever the Duchess does anything deemed to be embarrassing, he will get straight on the phone to 'give her a talking to'.
He was, say friends, straight on the phone to her after she gave an interview last December in which she said she enjoyed going out 'on the pull' with her daughters.
'Sarah insists it was a joke, but Andrew was furious,' says the friend. 'Sarah dreads these phone calls. She does not exactly kow-tow to Andrew, but she is always very mindful of what she does and says, to the point where she's stepping on eggshells.
'Not offending the Royal Family is always uppermost in her mind.'
Which is rather sad, really, given that they have made it perfectly clear they want nothing to do with her. How hurtful it must be when her girls go off to Sandringham for Christmas with all the rest of the royal clan -- as was the case last December -- leaving their mother behind.
Together with the death of Carolyn Cotterell, the Duchess has taken some heavy blows these past few years, leaving her feeling more isolated than ever. But she just gets on with it the best she can.
Tomorrow, she flies back out to America for more WeightWatchers duties, culminating in an event on behalf of the Washington Speakers Bureau in Cincinnati -- a motivational talk about how to pull back from the financial brink.
Then it's back to Britain to spend the weekend with the girls -- Beatrice boards at St George's, Ascot, and Eugenie at Marlborough -- and then off again to the States for a WeightWatchers media tour. And so it will go on.
In between, she will no doubt find the time to continue writing her children's books. The Duchess also wants to write historical novels with a lead character called Lady Margaret Hartmoor -- 'She's me in 1759' -- who is 'attacked by highwaymen and things like that'.
A flight of fantasy on behalf of the Duchess, perhaps, to escape the painful reality of her real life.
By Natalie Clark and Rebecca English
Daily Mail June 11 2005
