Rather than take the 'Current Affairs thread' OT, I thought that I would post a bit of background information here in order to develop something that AristoCat said:
In countless biographies, it states how Sarah hung out with a set of people that were wealthier, prettier, and had more connections. While they paid their own way in the VIP life, she had to work as a chalet girl to pay for her stays at skiing lodges and was basically, socially, the 'poor relation.'
I first came across the then-Sarah Fegusson a long time before she had hooked up with Prince Andrew. She was at a Polo Match and was 'all over' the then Lady Diana Spencer, who was engaged but not yet married - this would have been around May 1981. Let me tell you something about this world:
The world of professional polo is a jet-set one; Polo teams are divided into various levels, with the best known as 'High Goal', who are financed by enormously wealthy '
Patrons' as they are known. These Patrons are usually very, very wealthy businessmen [hardly ever female]. The
Patrons hire the top players to play in their teams - they are wealthy professionals, who can earn as much as $500,000 for a few short weeks' play in the UK - the summer polo season starts in May and finishes this week so far as the UK is concerned, before the jet set teams move off further afield: Deauville in France and then the United States, before going off to the Argentine.
High Goal polo is enormously expensive. It is a world of private planes [Patrons sometimes own planes the size of 747s, fitted out with vast bedroom suites and bathrooms with Jacuzzis etc]. When they move around the world, they live in the most extraordinarary luxury - the late Kerry Packer [Australian Tycoon] was a polo patron - in the summer in England he took over a whole floor in the Savoy hotel and also bought a vast polo estate costing about £20,000,000 in Sussex, England. Polo players are also provided with cars by their patrons - Ferraris, Porsches etc etc. Except that they all have Helicopters at their disposal, in the same way that your Diarist has her bicycle!! The polo parties are impossible to describe - the lavish food and drink and vintage champagne. My husband and I have been invited to a few such do's [somehow!!] and even though I went along well-prepared [or so I thought] for it so be out of this world, even then I was taken aback by venues transformed into the most amazing 'sets'.
Polo Patrons [who are often in their very late 50's or 60's] always have very beautiful women on their arms - often second or third wives. They always tend to marry beautiful models, sometimes of the 'aristocratic model type rather than just the super-model type. These women - stick thin and blonde - are clad in the most expensive designer clothes [very much more 'showy' than the 'quiet couture tastes' of the Queen and the British Royal family] and their jewels are Cartier, Bulgari, Harry Winston etc. Diamonds flash and sparkel from their wrists, fingers, ears, necks etc. Professional Polo Players' wives are often similarly attired. They say in the world of Polo the only winter clothes you need are ski-wear! Otherwise you follow the sun as you stop off at jet-set destinations all around the world.....
Sarah Fergusson was known as 'Fergie', and very unkindly, also known as 'Fat Fergie'. And she stuck out like a sore thumb - this is not meant to sound unkind but she did not look that attractive in those days [Royal life did change her dress and grooming!]. She was an American Size 16, wore droopy chain-store print summer dresses and her ginger hair and very-freckled face made her stand out like a sore thumb alongside these beauties. What was Sarah doing there, then? The answer was of course that she was always with her father, Major Ron, [confusingly also referred to as 'Fergie' by many people, which was probably why poor Sarah was also known as 'Fat Fergie', so that you knew whether people were referring to the father or the daughter!!] who filled a rather strange self-created and unpaid role as Prince Charles's Polo Manager. This basically consisted of co-ordinating the PoW's diary to ensure that he could play in polo matches and making sure that the PoW's horses were always ready and waiting in the pony lines [place where polo ponies wait at the side of the polo field]. This Royal connection was much traded on by Sarah who, by turning up with her father, was 'admitted into the rich world of 1980's polo'. She has of course also been around the polo scene as a child and for the same reasons, but the late 1970's and 1980's were the particularly relevent times, as by then Sarah was forging her own social life.
Whilst Sarah's 'Royal Connections' brought her admittance to this inner-sanctum of wealth, it is perhaps telling that no one was interested in dating her. That aside, Sarah seemed pretty astute in looking for 'useful connections' herself. She befriended Diana, often a bored spectator at these matches, there to support the PoW. I noticed later how Diana always used to say that the press photographers made her time at Polo difficult - perhaps, but the real problem I am sure was that Diana had no interest in Polo or horses.
I next remember noticing Sarah in the winter when she was in Verbier, the 'jet set' ski resort. She used to frequent 'The Farm Club', a hideously over-priced nightclub popular with the rich Euro jet set. [you bought your own bottle of Scotch for $400 and it was kept behind the bar, and it was full of empty tables marked 'reserved' so you could never sit down]. I hated the pretension of the place.] It was the haunt of Paddy McNally too, although initially, from memory, Sarah was dating the well-connected [but not vastly wealthy] Englishmen Kim Smith-Bingham. Later, when Sarah was an item with McNally, I remember her particularly because of how she always 'stuck out'. The wealthy European jet-setters all seemed to be dating beautiful stick-thin models - who themselves were all quite rich from their modelling - and also welcome at the best parties because of the cachet their beauty and professions provided. They all wore designer clothes in those expensive hues of blue green and lilac and with gold and silver and designer bags. On the night in question that I particularl remember, Sarah was wearing vast black leather jeans teamed with [presumably in an attempt to be feminine] a chiffon-y lacey blouse of the type a Mummy might buy for her young Sloan Ranger offspring. Poor Sarah looked totally incongruous - but that appeared to be her going-out outfit of choice, because when I saw her on subsequent nights, she was always wearing it. She was always chain smoking and drinking and although she was always very noisy and shouting out to people, I never though she looked happy. During the McNally years, she used to disappear to London, where she was working as a secretary. I do know that McNally had no intention of marrying her - he used to claim that he did not want to upset his children, but in reality, I expect that as he had a vast fortune, I expect that he did not ever want to run the risk of losing it in a divorce.
In many respects, McNally was not a good choice for Sarah; he offered her no long-term prospects and indeed, although he got her her job in London [working for publisher Richard Burton] this actually seemed a clever way of distancing himself from Sarah when he felt that he had had bit much of her - in short, I don't think he was awfully kind to her when looked at closely. In the summer months though, he did provide her with a taste of the glitzy jet-set lifestyle, as he used to control the advertising at Grands Prix and used to travel every fortnight to these glamorous venues. I used to go to the Monaco Grand Prix and saw him 'holding court' there. Oddly enough, despite his great wealth he was not rated as a 'catch', the young model girls who used to turn up were all with the drivers, who were regarded as young and sexy even if they were physically often unimpressive [drivers are mostly quite small and are not necessarily particularly handsome- but they are very rich and can have the pick of the girls!] McNally, mid forty-ish and looking older - and trying to 'look hip' with his penchant for wearing sunglasses even when he was inside - was regarded as 'no catch' and was known by the unflattering nickname of 'Toad'. The main problem though was that I think that he introduced Sarah to a world of Jet-Set living to which she wanted to aspire, but would never be able to achieve through marriage to a Royal. Or probably marriage to anyone from the Jet Set, who tended to prefer beautiful, thin women however cruel this may sound.
I've met Prince Andrew a few times. He seemed well-meaning in a vague sort of way, but I would describe him as 'a bit boring'. The imagine presented of him by the press before his marriage was of 'the playboy prince'. His reputation had been enhanced through his service in the Falklands with the British Navy, but I think that that was his high point. Off duty, he mostly seemed to prefer to stay at home. Whilst I have no way of knowing whether this is true, the Press - the 'respectable' broadsheets and not just the tabloids used to talk about him slumping down watching video after video.
In my humble opinion, he was never going to provide Sarah with what she wanted. The jet set life as neither in Andrew's pocket or even his wishes.
Just my thoughts,
Alex