I want to live here, not in America'

[FetchingHag]

I want to live here, not in America'
(Filed: 19/06/2003)


The Duchess of York talks to Cassandra Jardine about her father's death, the possibility of marriage and transatlantic commuting


The Duchess of York last saw her father on the morning of March 16, as she was setting off for Australia. Major Ronald Ferguson's parting words to her were characteristically jovial. "He told me," she says, "that he was the reason why all our family had such good legs."

The Duchess of York: 'I'm on my own now. I must be solid'

She asked him if she should still go, as contracted, to interview the cast of a film of Peter Pan for a DVD.

"You have to do your work," he replied. "I'll see you when you get back."

"Keep fighting," she begged him, as she left his room at the Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke.

"What do you mean?" he said. "I've got to get home to look after the horses."

As her plane touched down in Bangkok, she was given the news that he had died. For a second, she considered coming straight home but, true to his spirit, she carried on.

Sarah Ferguson and her father were exceptionally close: after her mother left for a new life with Hector Barrantes in Argentina, it was he who brought her up, filled her Christmas stocking and acted as her guide. Was he able to be both father and mother? "Not really, but he tried his best".

She never blamed him for the affairs that drove her mother away. "I was only 12, I didn't understand," she points out. "I thought it was my fault. He missed Mum dreadfully and wanted her back but she was so much happier in Argentina."

He was gruff and a stickler for punctuality - he would leave her to walk from the station in Hampshire if she missed her train - but to his younger daughter he showed a vulnerability that he concealed from others. "He was a terribly kind man, gentle and shy, not that keen on social events. I never rowed with him because I wanted to please him."

He called her GB, because of her ginger, bushy hair; her children, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, called him "Grubby" and loved his Roald Dahl-like enthusiasm for animals. "When he gave up shooting, he would go and tell the pheasants to come on to his land."

Major Ron used to be the Prince of Wales's polo manager and it was through him that the duchess first met Prince Andrew. He revelled in his daughter's new status but the publicity he attracted had unfortunate consequences. Two scandals, one involving a massage parlour, another an affair, meant he was thrown out of the Life Guards, lost his job with the Prince of Wales and gave up his beloved polo. Now his daughter says that "he loved the spotlight, every minute of it".

Throughout her difficulties, he was her chief supporter and adviser. "He was very stoic, very strong. 'We've been through worse,' he would say, and he promised me that wherever I was, whatever happened to me, he would find and look after me. After I was married, whenever I went to a hotel, he would always have flowers put in the room."

Verbal displays of emotion were not, however, his strong point and it was only a few years ago, when she rang him in tears to tell him that Nelson Mandela had said she was "his friend", that he said how much he believed in her and wished others could see her worth. "Better late than never," she says.

In their tendency to impulsive behaviour, affairs and insolvency, they seem alike. "Up to a point," she says. "I can change. He couldn't." But she treasures the favourite quotation from Kipling's If, about walking with kings without losing the common touch: to her, it encapsulates him. "He had no sense of hierarchy, and was absolutely loyal."

Nevertheless, they fell out when he published his memoirs, The Galloping Major, in 1994, revealing her sufferings at the hands of the Royal Family at a delicate point in her divorce settlement negotiations. "He should have asked me more about the book and maybe he could have got the facts right," she says, tersely.

It remained his dearest wish that she and the Duke of York would get back together. Even on his deathbed? "No," she says. "But he had written to the Duke of Edinburgh, asking to see him. He wanted to talk to him about me."

That wish was not granted, but other members of the Royal Family were kinder. "Charles was very good, he called Dad, had him and Susan [his second wife] to stay at Highgrove. And he came to the funeral. The Queen sent a representative."

To his great joy, the Life Guards also reinstated him and their band played at the funeral. "He died a proud man," she says.

She, in turn, is proud that during the years when he had prostate cancer, he used his notoriety to increase public awareness of the disease. Like him, she has redeemed herself in the public eye through her tireless charity work, most prominently for Children in Crisis, which she set up a decade ago. After seeing how the health of children in Poland was affected by pollution, she set up a recuperation home there. The charity now funds projects in Britain (drugs and lifestyle education for primary schools) and troublespots throughout the world, for which she has raised ?15 million, largely by her personal efforts. Her willingness to capitalise on her misfortunes has also meant that "Fat Fergie" has become the figurehead for Weight Watchers in America. It is five years now since Sir Anthony O'Reilly saved her from imminent bankruptcy by offering her a contract.

No doubt it is an ego boost to stride out in front of an audience of 5,000 to the tune of Pretty Woman, but it has also been tough. Three weeks out of four during term-time, she flies to America, where her days start at four in the morning with a 45-minute session on her exercise bike, followed by breakfast of an egg-white omelette. From then on, she has back-to-back appointments, until she races back to Britain for the weekend.

On her travels, she takes a camera, which acts as her "release and consolation" during the lonely weeks. She sends thousands of pictures home to be archived but she talks humbly of her amazement when a publisher suggested making a book of them to raise money for Children in Crisis.

The book, Moments, is not another of her misjudgments: the photographs show an eye for colour, pattern and the dramatic moment. They include touchingly personal pictures of her children and their father but none of her own "Dads". "I didn't choose them," she says.

Despite the therapy of looking through the lens at others, there are times on her travels when she feels lonely and exhausted. "But I don't get bored because obesity is a very serious subject. Besides, I'm talking about a subject I need help with, which is weight. I still look at myself with fat women's eyes." She doesn't need to. At 43, her figure is trim, her skin surprisingly clear and her eyes bright for one who has had a lifelong addiction to "over-stacking" her diary. The famously bad dress sense that once made her the butt of jokes has been tamed by a classic, but not po-faced, wardrobe supplied free by Dolce and Gabbana.

Today, she is wearing black trousers with a frock-coat jacket, a white shirt with ruffled cuffs, and a heavy, turquoise-studded belt which matches her necklace and her eyes. The effect is cowgirl meets Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and it works.

Last summer, thanks to her work for Weight Watchers and also Wedgwood - as well as her books, videos and television work - she cleared her ?4 million overdraft. She is now free to organise her life and live where she chooses. After 16 years living under royal roofs, first in Buckingham Palace, then at Sunninghill, which she shared with the Duke of York - after, as well as during, their marriage - she is enjoying the liberation of having her own rented house two miles away from her ex-husband.

But the Duke will soon be moving to Royal Lodge, Windsor, formerly the Queen Mother's home; rumour had it that she might live there, too. She shakes her head emphatically: "Andrew and the girls will be going to Royal Lodge. I'm not, I wouldn't be allowed. The girls will be boarding at school in September, so they'll probably be wherever I am."

Beatrice will stay at St George's Windsor, where she has been a day girl; Eugenie will probably go to Marlborough. "They aren't worried by boarding school. Eugenie is 13 and looking forward to being with some 'really fit' boys, while Beatrice, who at nearly 15 is quite a young lady, prefers a girls' school. Besides, they know about boarding. When I fly to America, I always call it going to boarding school."

Although her trans-Atlantic commuting has been gruelling, she is proud of being a working single parent who has contributed to her children's upkeep. "I used to have painful scenes when they were little. Now they are very practical. They know that if they want to have the latest Britney Spears CD, they mustn't complain if Mum goes out to work."

Though she talks tough and practical, she can suddenly flip into quivering vulnerability and say that all she wants is a quiet resting place. She fears a return to over-indulgence and extravagance if she were to relax her iron discipline for a second.

Often, she sounds as if she is reciting from her most recent confessional book, What I Know Now, a series of moral tales about forgiving your enemies, living for the moment, putting children first, calling people by their first names (which she does a lot) and accepting compliments gracefully (which she also does).

Perhaps the moment has come for her to move to America, the country that took her in when she was on her uppers, where the national fondness for soul-baring made her a standard bearer rather than an embarrassment. Recently, there was talk of a daily chat show but Ellen de Generes got the slot. "It might have been too much for me," she says, stoically, "and I don't think I could bear to spend more than five days apart from my children."

So she is not, as she once said, "a closet American"? "That was humour," she protests. "The reason why I go down very well in America is because Americans are very open about themselves and their problems and I speak publicly about my problems because it helps people to change their lives or reinvent themselves.

"Goodness, if I can do it, a lot of people can. I went through bankruptcy, divorce, mistakes, humiliation. But, no, I don't want to live there, I want to live here. I like Britain, I like everything it stands for, I like the people. I'd like to spend more time here and I think I will. I don't know if I could earn money here. If it was for Weight Watchers and obesity, maybe I could; if it was just to promote a car, probably not."

But the days have surely passed when doors were slammed in her face and restaurants emptied as she entered? "I don't know if that time has passed. I don't know if it will ever pass." And now that her father is no longer standing behind her, she will have to cope with any future slights without his support. "I'm on my own now. I must be solid," she says, clenching her fist. Her nest is empty during term-time, and the retirement of Concorde is making her commute to the US still more taxing: surely the time has come for her to find another man with whom she can settle down in Britain.

"Oh yes, I could retire and be very happy," she agrees. "But it's a brave man that would take on this bouncy ball of energy. Anybody who was photographed with me would have their privacy invaded, and not many people want their face on the front page of newspapers. But we'll see. There may be somebody, somewhere who might just pick up the gauntlet."