---
title: "Sarah Ferguson: The Duchess of Scandal."
description: "\"I think 'never say never' with Fergie. She's a great survivor, she will quietly do things under the radar. And I'm afraid a leopard never changes its spots.\"\n\nThese were the words of Andrew Lownie, royal historian and author of *Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York*. The subject of his words was Sarah Ferguson, formerly Sarah, the Duchess of York, and ex-wife of former Prince Andrew: whose abject fall into disgrace we recently covered in a separate video on this channel.\n\nLownie delivered his observation in an interview with Sky News in September 2025, and in the wake of yet another in a long list of royal scandals involving Ferguson.\n\nBut this one, quite probably, her most serious yet.\n\n## A Scandal in France\n\nSummertime, 1992.\n\nIn June, Denmark voted against signing the EU's Maastricht Treaty and unexpectedly won the European Championship in football three weeks later. In July, the G7 Summit took place in Munich and the Olympic Games began in Barcelona. And in August, Sarah, Duchess of York was photographed in France having her toes sucked by a man that wasn't her husband.\n\nThe photos were published by the *Daily Mirror* and kicked off a ferocious public scandal. This was particularly unwelcome news for the British Monarchy and the Queen personally, who was by that time suffering what she later declared her 'annus horribilis' — a pompous expression for the most challenging year of her reign.\n\nFerguson — known to the press as 'Fergie' — had been married to the Queen's son Andrew since 1986. Upon their marriage, the couple had become the Duke and Duchess of York — a royal title (or style) bestowed by the Queen, which — in Andrew's case — accompanied his other titles 'the Earl of Inverness' and 'Baron Killyleagh'. Their marriage was also the apex of Ferguson's popularity: within a few years, her image had become tainted by one press scandal after another. We'll get to those in a bit.\n\nThe man pictured at the other end of Ferguson's toes that summer day in 1992 was John Bryan, an American believed to be the Duchess' secret boyfriend. He was also her financial advisor, a fact made questionable as much by the photos themselves, as by the fact that Bryan was declared bankrupt in the UK only four years later.\n\nBut even more questionable was that Ferguson — at the time — was still married, with her husband Andrew still serving in the Royal Navy and spending large periods of time at sea. The Royal Family had announced their separation earlier in the year, but rumours had swirled of a potential reconciliation which — in the circumstances — would have been a headache relieved for the monarchy. Ferguson had already caused a stir with rumours of infidelity, but John Bryan was not actually the subject of those. As far as the public knew, the relationship between him and the Duchess was simply one of an ordinary clerical acquaintance.\n\nCausing an even greater stir was the nature of the act depicted, as well as Ferguson's topless state of dress and her demeanour, all of which was considered beneath the mannerisms and poise of a serving royal. Perhaps the greatest scandal of all, though, was that the pair had embarked on holiday with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie in tow — Ferguson's daughters with Andrew, then four and two years old — who were present at the time Bryan carried out the infamous act.\n\nThe British tabloid press had a field day. After the *Daily Mirror* broke the story with the headline \"Fergie's Stolen Kisses\", the *Sun* and *Daily Mail* followed suit with coverage of their own. Front pages were splashed with the grainy images, along with various insinuations and inferrals about the nature of the uncovered relationship. Pundits and newspaper columnists lined up to denounce the affair as a humiliating breach of royal decorum, with many framing it as another blow to an already-embattled monarchy. The scandal couldn't really have come at a worse time, as earlier the same year, other royal marriages had publicly come apart at the seams: Charles and Diana's marriage had collapsed in March, and in April Princess Anne's divorce to Captain Mark Phillips was finalised. And yet the toe-sucking scandal eclipsed both of those, dominating news cycles for days and becoming referenced as one of the most damaging personal scandals to hit the royal family for decades.\n\nThe scandal led to embarrassment and outrage by the Palace. For Ferguson, the backlash was swift. The photos just so happened to break when the Duchess was back in Britain, visiting her in-laws at one of the royal family's many sprawling estates in Balmoral, Scotland. Prince Philip, not renowned for his composure, reportedly hurled the morning newspaper onto the breakfast room table before his daughter-in-law and stormed out of sight. The Duchess was quickly removed from royal duties, and the Palace also withdrew most of her privileges. When her and Andrew's divorce was finalised four years later, she received a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might otherwise have been — being given around £3 million, which compared limply with Princess Diana's £17 million (plus allowance) following her own divorce from Prince Charles the same year.\n\nThe scandal hardened the royal family against Ferguson in a way that had not been before. With that said, the Duchess' previous mishaps weren't all that far from doing so on their own. She had long earned a minor reputation as a social climber, and various public gaffs had earned her consistent, unwelcome newspaper headlines.\n\nIn fact, Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws had not been one of roses or harmony almost since the day she'd left Westminster Abbey years earlier, as Prince Andrew's wife.\n\n## A Major Royal Scandal\n\nSarah was born in 1959 to Susan and Major Ronald Ferguson, a former British Army Captain and polo enthusiast who was — at some point — instructor to both Prince Philip and Prince Charles.\n\nThe family was of aristocratic lineage on both sides, and Sarah later described them as \"country gentry with a bit of old money\". She was also, by ancestry, distantly related to the royal family and, by extension, her future husband Andrew. Both families were connected by way of Major Ronald and Prince Philip's polo connection, and the Fergusons were also known to Diana and the Spencers by way of their mothers having attended school together.\n\nIt was Princess Diana who presented Ferguson to Andrew at Royal Ascot in 1985, and the pair married a year later. Both were held in high esteem by the press — with Andrew riding high off his recent service in the Falklands War and Ferguson seeming to offer relatable charm to a public accustomed to overly-upright royals. But within their showy social sphere, the Ferguson family had already borne an instance of considerable scandal.\n\nSarah's parents had divorced in 1974, after Susan left the family and moved to none other than Argentina, Britain's later adversary in the 1982 Falklands War. There, she married Héctor Barrantes, a polo player with whom she'd been having an affair. Barrantes automatically became Ferguson's stepfather and went on to enlist in the Argentine army during the war, although he did not fight. Susan remained in Argentina the rest of her life, where she died in a car accident in 1998 and was buried next to Hector, who died of lymphatic cancer eight years previously.\n\nFollowing her parents' divorce, 15-year-old Sarah and her sister Jane were raised by their father. Ronald found a new wife a year later — also called Susan — and had three more daughters with her. By all accounts, he doted on his children, although his keen emphasis on social standing and connections seemingly wore off on Sarah and the decisions she would make in later life.\n\nAfter his daughter married into the monarchy, Ronald whole-heartedly embraced the trappings and elevated status that came with proximity to the royal line. He appeared at various public events and in the media, and reportedly once rode so close to the Queen in a procession that he blocked part of the public's view of her — a considerable breach of etiquette for the famously rigid and image-conscious monarchs. He also continued to use the title of \"Major\" in civilian life, even though he'd achieved the rank of 'captain' while on active military service and \"Major\" as an honorary rank when he retired in 1968. To use military titles after active service was seen as an outdated practice, albeit not entirely unheard of — Captain Mark Phillips, husband of Princess Anne, did likewise throughout later life.\n\nYet despite his appetite for social status, it was ironically Ronald who added the next major scandal to the Ferguson family name. In 1988, he was revealed by the *News of the World* to be a visitor to the Wigmore Club, a so-called massage parlour in London which was known to offer sexual services for its members. When the story broke, it caused major embarrassment for the royals and for Sarah, although Ronald denied ever availing of anything other than simple massages at the club. But in a curious parallel with Andrew's bumbling future *Newsnight* interview, he made an unconvincing case by claiming he used the Wigmore (quote) \"as a kind of cocoon where I could shut myself away for an hour and think\".\n\nThe scandal was the first to befall Sarah in her new life as a royal. But very soon, it would be replaced by more scandals entirely of her own.\n\n## Unfergiable\n\nNow, for the early part of her marriage to Andrew, Sarah was generally looked at favorably by the Queen and Prince Philip, if not quite by the rest of the royal household. Princess Anne, for example, reportedly never liked her sister-in-law and referred to her as an 'Outsider'. Admittedly, even the Queen and Philip didn't really adore Ferguson — with Philip once memorably calling her 'odd and pointless.'\n\nStill, the new Duchess displayed an exuberance which seemed to benefit the royal image. She was from a family of relatively good standing and with polo privilege — which seemed to be just about good enough to meet Prince Philip's taste. She was a capable horse rider with an enthusiasm for hunting and fishing — which seemed good enough to satisfy the Queen's taste. And the Duchess was attractive, something appreciated by the public — just as it had been with Princess Diana. So despite the relative social embarrassment caused by her mother's withdrawal to Argentina, for the time being Sarah was (generally) widely held in good standing.\n\nThe Duchess and Andrew had two daughters — Beatrice, born in 1988 as the first female royal since Andrew's older sister Anne — and Eugenie, born in 1990. The Princesses automatically became the fifth and sixth in line to the throne, and both royal births were welcomed and positively covered in the British press.\n\nBut Ronald's misadventures at the Wigmore club caused a dent in his daughter's good standing with the Palace — certainly with Prince Philip, who refused to have anything more to do with his erstwhile polo buddy. Not only that, but Sarah's bubbly personality — which initially played well to the press — began to work against her when she started to seem unable to turn off the tap. She began to exhibit characteristic signs of lavish living — going on royal trips and staying far beyond the length of time she was supposed to. And in 1988, she accompanied Andrew to the UK/LA Gala in Los Angeles, where she insisted on taking the floor — something, at the time, outside protocol for royal wives. That's when this happened:\n\n[Video reference: 21:03 to 21:19 — Sarah Ferguson making a sexual innuendo remark at the UK/LA Gala]\n\nDespite the chuckles of the audience members present, the remark went down like a lead balloon back home. For a royal to engage in pub talk was one thing, but for a serving, married, female member of the family to make a sexual innuendo in front of a respectable audience and journalists was quite another, going far beyond the pale of what was permissible. The British press responded with derision, describing the California visit as \"a brash, vulgar, weak-humoured exhibition by two royals.\" Buckingham Palace's press service quickly determined that Ferguson was not to be trusted with a microphone in hand, and the episode was the first in a line of poor judgement calls for which the Duchess would later become notorious.\n\nThings soon got starkly worse. Only a year on from both her father's Wigmore debacle and the controversial remark in LA, a friend of Ferguson's was quoted by *People Magazine* in 1989 saying:\n\n\"Sarah just isn't the totally committed mother type.\"\n\nWhat may have seemed like a harmless remark turned serious when it was reported Ferguson was having an affair with American businessman Steve Wyatt. Even more troubling, the affair reportedly took place at the time the Duchess was pregnant with her second daughter Eugenie. With press interest rising, the royal family were getting just about fed up with Ferguson's constant tabloid fodder, and banned her from any further dealings with Wyatt — who disappeared back to America. But their romance gained its greatest notoriety when pictures of Wyatt with one-year-old Beatrice were leaked and appeared in newspapers in January 1992. This, according to royal historian David Leigh, was enough to spell the end of Ferguson's marriage to Andrew. Two months later, the Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess had separated.\n\nAnd that was when Ferguson responded with one of her worst decisions yet: by rebounding into the arms of John Bryan, another wealthy Texan and acquaintance of Wyatt's. The release of the toe-sucking images from the south of France and the ensuing media furore only pissed off the Palace like never before. And John Bryan — like her father before and Andrew later — managed to make a bad situation worse, by publicly clarifying: \"I wasn't sucking her toes, I was kissing them.\"\n\nDespite this, he gained the nickname the \"Toe-Sucking Lover\" and headlines like \"Fergie Toe-Job\" accompanied the initial *Mirror* piece which broke the story.\n\nWith that, the Duchess' standing in the eyes of the royals crumbled and she was quickly shunted away from Balmoral and out of royal service. Her marriage with Andrew officially ended with divorce in 1996, 10 years after their nuptials and after two years of settlement negotiations. As a courtesy, Ferguson was allowed to keep the title \"Duchess of York\" — but she lost \"Her Royal Highness\", since a divorced woman who obtained her title through marriage would no longer use it unless specifically permitted (which she wasn't). She was no longer invited to royal events, and generally left to the cold reality of civilian life. The Duchess of York was now, for all intents and purposes, no longer a part of the monarchy — except as the mother of the child princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. With that, she may have faded into obscurity, and this video might have never existed. But she didn't.\n\nIn fact, it wasn't long before Ferguson started to appear in the public sphere with greater frequency than ever before. No sooner had her divorce been finalised, than she released a memoir, *My Story*, in 1996. It flopped. The press was critical, framing the book as self-pitying, sensational, and little more than a thin attempt to cash in on besmirching the royal house. Some newspapers highlighted the large advance Ferguson had received, and one reviewer for *The Times* called *My Story* little more than \"a protected whinge\" and perhaps the \"worst book of the decade.\"\n\nHowever, Ferguson received a more sympathetic response on the other side of the Atlantic. American reviewers saw her as a wounded figure, isolated by an unforgiving marriage to a navybound royal and simultaneously mistreated by the press and the palace alike. To capitalise on this, Ferguson embarked on a promotional tour to North America where she publicly implied, among other things, that she and Andrew had had an open relationship. She told Oprah Winfrey that the stresses of rigid palace life had ended the honeymoon of her marriage, and that for the few years of their marriage until then, she'd only seen her husband for around 40 days a year. And while in the US, despite the mixed reaction to her book, Ferguson found her most successful venture of all: a lucrative long-term partnership with weight loss company Weight Watchers.\n\nAmong the many criticisms Ferguson had been subjected to was in relation to her weight, especially during her pregnancy with Beatrice, during which she was classlessly derided with nicknames like the 'Duchess of Pork\" in the British tabloids. So in 1997, Weight Watchers approached her with an avant-garde proposal: to be the face of a healthier, more sustainable approach to food, stress, and body image. Ferguson became the brand's global spokesperson, and remained so for over a decade, during which time Weight Watchers saw a noticeable surge in membership — and the Duchess gained what was her most successful venture in civilian life.\n\nShe also threw herself into various types of charity work. As a longtime patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, Ferguson opened specialist units at Middlesex Hospital, University College London, Royal Marsden Hospital and others. She became a patron of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, various women's causes and also AIDS prevention — although the latter briefly led her into some friction with Princess Diana, who'd taken up that particular cause as her own. And in line with Ferguson's own accounts of childhood trauma, she founded children's charities, and announced her aim to raise money for children's causes by way of her self-written children's books. This included the *Budgie the Little Helicopter* series, which ran as a children's television show in the US in the late 1990s on the Fox Network.\n\nWith that said, her charity work was not without significant criticism. Some British outlets pointed out that the bulk of the revenue generated by her book sales went into the Duchess' pocket, rather than to the charities — including children's charities — of which she was a patron. Ferguson responded defensively, pointing out that the books constituted a large part of her livelihood and that a figure like Charles could rely on income from the Duchy of Cornwall for his living expenses in a way that she could not. But questions about the misuse of funds — in spite of her charitable efforts — continued.\n\nIn the meantime, after an intermittent stint in the US, the Duchess returned to the UK where — despite their divorce and to the great horror of the royal family — she continued to live with Andrew. The pair lived at Sunninghill Park — a large country house in Berkshire which they'd been gifted by the Queen — until 2002, when they moved to the enormous Royal Lodge in Windsor, vacated with the death of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother the same year. This arrangement happened to cause a further stir when Andrew later sold Sunninghill to Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev, for 130% of its asking price. Kulibayev seemingly had no intention of using the mansion, and Sunninghill fell into disrepair before being demolished a decade later.\n\nAnd yet all this — the strange post-marital relationship, the murky ties to oligarchs — would pale in comparison with what the couple would get up to in the years to follow, as well as to the wanton damage this would cause to the standing of the Royal Family's name.\n\n## The Skies Darken\n\nNow, if you've watched our recent video on Andrew, formerly Prince Andrew of course, then you'll know exactly what kind of flames his royal life has wound up in as of late 2025.\n\nBut the scandal that eventually devoured the former Prince's reputation only began to arise after 2010 — and most acutely in the wake of his ruinous BBC *Newsnight* interview in 2019. For the entire first decade of the 2000s, Andrew carried on as normal as both Prince and the UK's Special Representative for Trade and Investment. His fall from grace was brewing but his reputation, for the time being, lay intact.\n\nThis was definitely not so for his ex-wife throughout the same period.\n\nIn years post-2000, Sarah Ferguson seemed to lurch from one controversy to another. In 2008, she appeared in a documentary film entitled 'The Duchess in Hull', focusing on obesity in the east English town of Hull. For a well-connected, wealthy royal to document the lives of the less well-off was seen as poor taste, and the documentary received poor reviews. But Ferguson seemed not to learn from the mistake, as the following year, she appeared in 'The Duchess on the Estate', a hugely-controversial, multi-part series in which she visited the deprived neighbourhood of Northern Moor in Manchester. Her rather un-groundbreaking account of drug use, crime and a \"lack of community spirit\" didn't impress viewers, and the locals of Northern Moor protested against the show's release.\n\nThat may have been bad enough, but Ferguson immediately had even bigger fish to fry. Her money troubles were becoming apparent, becoming revealed in a humbling manner in mid-2010.\n\nIn May that year, Ferguson met with a wealthy foreign businessman, and offered to sell him access to Andrew — still in his Trade Envoy role at the time — for the princely sum of half a million pounds. But the wealthy foreign businessman turned out to be Mazher Mahmood — alias the Fake Sheikh — an undercover reporter for the *News of the World*, who covertly filmed the entire encounter. The secreted footage recorded Ferguson leaving with £40,000 cash in a briefcase Mahmood had given her as a forward payment. The resulting scandal was, once again, enormous — this time, spilling over to the far side of the Atlantic. *TIME* magazine published an article about the nefarious affair, and ABC News followed suit with a piece of their own. The Royal Family was, again, appalled — and Ferguson was forced to sheepishly issue a statement acknowledging a \"serious lapse in judgment\". According to the BBC, the scandal just so happened to occur during a period of 'rapprochement' between Ferguson and the royals, a relative calm that was gracelessly blown up by the new revelations. Multiple charities associated with the Duchess severed ties or suspended their engagement, and Prince Andrew also issued a statement of his own — denying any knowledge of the meeting or that he would benefit from it.\n\nIn the years that followed, the Fake Sheikh scandal was somewhat curtailed by growing criticism of the stings orchestrated by the *News of the World*. Mahmood was jailed in 2016 for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, with the paper having folded 5 years earlier in the wake of its phone-tapping scandal and various other controversies. But the collapse of one of Ferguson's most consistent media hounds didn't change the scrutiny that had become of her financial interests.\n\nAs the Cash for Access scandal raged, it was revealed that Ferguson faced a debt of up to £5 million to the bank, mostly due to poor financial management resulting in enormous overdrafts. Amidst the turmoil, it was also revealed that Hartmoor LLC — a US-registered media company Ferguson had founded to profit from her positive reception in America, had collapsed the previous year with debts of around £650,000. The demise of the company seemed to betray the very financial impropriety suspected to be at the heart of her woes, as the company had occupied an expensive office building in Manhattan despite the Duchess being permanently resident in the UK.\n\nFor a person in some way connected to the royal family to be in such financial arrears was yet another source of distaste for the monarchy, the latest in what was by now an inevitable sequence of press blow-ups attributable to the Duchess. But this time, her misadventures would be overshadowed by a new scandal — one facing Andrew directly.\n\nOnly a few months on from Mazher Mahmood's sting in 2010, Andrew was photographed in New York with Jeffrey Epstein — who'd been convicted of serious sex offences against minors two years previously. The images were published in March 2011, leading to significant uproar and scrutiny of the pair's relationship. It was soon revealed that Andrew had spent no less than four days with the disgraced financier, during which time he inexplicably chose to stay with Epstein at his mansion in Manhattan. Although this new scandal concerned Andrew the most, Ferguson was — as ever — not far from the coalface. It was further revealed that Epstein had sent her £15,000 to help offset her financial woes — money she'd received in December, amidst her much-publicised economic woes and long after Epstein's conviction and release for offences of the most serious nature. To have accepted money from a known pedophile — not least given Ferguson's long involvement with children's charities — appeared an enormous blunder and self-contradiction, and for the second time in only a year, Ferguson found herself publicly admitting to a gross error of judgement. In an interview with London's *Evening Standard*, she declared that she deeply regretted that Epstein became involved with her in any way, and that (quote):\n\n\"I had no idea of the string of other allegations and court cases against him and I am distraught that I should have allowed myself to get out of debt with any help from him when my judgement was clouded.\"\n\nShe made that statement in early March, 2011 — just as the Epstein scandal began to grow teeth. And keep the date in mind, for it would prove her undoing much further down the line.\n\n## The Endgame?\n\nAs the years progressed, Ferguson's seemingly endless sequence of scandals seemed to quieten.\n\nPublic scrutiny related to the Epstein connection died down, and her financial woes were seemingly resolved — with the assistance from Andrew and the monarchy — by late 2011. She published another memoir — *Finding Sarah* — the same year, and was once again interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, in the course of which she dubiously explained her decision to accept money from Mazhar Mahmood by claiming she'd been drinking and was (quote) \"in the gutter at that moment\".\n\nThe relative quiet was not without further upheaval, however. During the promotional tour of her book, Ferguson infamously stormed out of an interview with *60 Minutes Australia* when questioned about the Cash-for-Access scandal, even though the presenter — Michael Usher — insisted the topic was consistent with themes described openly in the very same book. The following years saw an international arrest warrant for the Duchess issued by the state of Turkey, which accused her of false pretenses for covertly filming an orphanage during a visit in 2012. And the following years also brought more tabloid appearances, mostly relating to various unsuccessful personal relationships and nefarious investments in several investment schemes.\n\nBut all these paled in comparison with her previous scandals and, by-and-large, Ferguson experienced something of a minor rehabilitation with the royals. Having not been invited to the wedding of her nephew-by-marriage Prince William in 2011, she was invited to attend the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle in 2018: which reportedly led to some rancour among the other royals present. But all this relative harmony would change rapidly at the end of the 2010s, when the long-brewing Epstein scandal raised its head once more.\n\nA few years before, one of Epstein's victims — Virginia Giuffre — alleged she'd been trafficked on three occasions to have sex with Prince Andrew in 2001. Giuffre had been only seventeen years old at the time, and the allegations rattled the Prince's reputation and led to increasing public angst against the monarchy. The Palace denied the allegations, but Andrew's denials became the stuff of infamy in 2019 after Epstein — by now in police custody — committed suicide. Andrew blundered through one of the most damaging interviews in history with BBC *Newsnight*, and suddenly, scrutiny of both his and Sarah's relationship with Epstein dramatically intensified like it never had before.\n\nThe fallout was immediate, and Andrew was forced to step back from royal duties with swift effect. He retreated to Royal Lodge in an attempt to weather the resulting media firestorm. Somewhat laughably, the Palace turned to none other than John Bryan — Ferguson's former lover — to advise him on how to deal with the furore. This didn't make much sense at all. Not only had Bryan publicly cuckolded Andrew, but he'd managed to contain his own 1992 scandal with remarkable ineffectiveness. He'd sought an injunction to prevent the toe-sucking photos from being published, but failed — much to the horror and lasting embarrassment of Ferguson. He then reportedly embraced the scandal and even sold his story to the press for a quarter of a million pounds. For the Palace to have brought in the headstrong architect of a past scandal to remedy a current one would seem foolhardy. And it was. Several years later, Bryan was covertly recorded lending credence to the allegations made against Andrew and was forced to appear on *Piers Morgan Uncensored* to backtrack on them.\n\nThe public turned even further against the Yorks and the years after 2019 only got worse and worse for Andrew and Sarah alike. It was also revealed that she — like Andrew — had visited Epstein in Florida on at least one occasion and the extent of their friendship began to gain ever more suspicion.\n\nIn September 2025, the British *Mail on Sunday* revealed leaked emails suggesting that Ferguson had celebrated Epstein's release from prison in 2009 by visiting him in New York with her two daughters. This was bad enough, but only a month later, Giuffre's posthumous memoir, *Nobody's Girl*, was released — in which she repeated her claims about Andrew and went into further detail about the depraved circumstances as a result of Epstein's trafficking. In the wake of the book's publishing, public calls to release all previously withheld information about Epstein rose to deafening pitch. In the US, these centred on the so-called Epstein Files — a body of documents, communications, records, and other investigative materials related to the dead financier's criminal investigations, which public officials were widely called upon to release to the public. And in the UK, public bodies were put under pressure to release all information pertaining to British high officials who'd been in some way involved with him. And with that, even more came to light.\n\nAnother leaked email from January 2010 revealed that Ferguson had sought far more than the £15,000 received from Epstein, and had asked instead for \"50 or 100,000 US dollars\". This seemed to be lent some credit in an unearthed but undated email sent by Epstein to a friend, where he implied that he'd by then bankrolled Ferguson for a total of 15 years. Royal historian Andrew Lownie later stated that the sum of £15,000 was nowhere close to the true figure the Duchess had received from Epstein to offset her financial woes, as was claimed. In an interview with the *Telegraph*, he stated that neither Epstein nor Ferguson would concern themselves with such minor sums and that the true figure was, according to his sources, closer to around £2 million in total. As the news broke, one after another, various charities — from the Teenage Cancer Trust, and the British Heart Foundation — cut ties with Ferguson.\n\nIt didn't seem that there could be much more to be revealed about the Epstein scandal to bring Ferguson (or Andrew) into even greater disrepute. But there was. It turned out that Andrew had maintained contact with Epstein into at least February of 2011 — by which time the news of his meeting in New York had started to make waves back home. This uncontestably contradicted his claims to have cut contact with the financier following their New York meeting in December. In Ferguson's case, it was revealed that she'd contacted Epstein even later still, in April 2011, and had — astonishingly — \"humbly apologised\" for having appeared to distanced herself from him, writing to Epstein that he had been a \"steadfast, generous and supreme friend\" to her and her family. That particular exchange, as you'll recall from earlier in the video, took place two months after her declaration to the London *Evening Standard* that (quote):\n\n\"...I am distraught that I should have allowed myself to get out of debt with any help from him when my judgement was clouded.\"\n\nLike Andrew, she therefore revealed herself to have been entirely mistruthful regarding her dealings with the disgraced financier. Seemingly, the famously unreliable Duchess's avoidance of Epstein had, instead, lasted just only a handful of weeks. In response, Ferguson claimed Epstein had threatened to ruin her, and that the May 2011 email — along with its flowing praise — had been an attempt to mitigate the damage which might otherwise come her way by his hand. But enough was enough. Between the various allegations and revelations implicating her and Andrew, all of it wreaking more and more destruction still upon the monarchy, this turned out to be the final straw.\n\nOn October 30th, 2025, King Charles initiated formal removal of Andrew's \"Prince\", \"Duke of York\" titles and honours, leaving him henceforth known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Theoretically, as a commoner, Andrew would be exposed to further criminal or civil cases related to his actions in the past. Furthermore, Andrew and Sarah were obliged to surrender the lease of the Royal Lodge property and relocate elsewhere. Andrew was to be moved to a private property on the royal family's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, in an arrangement privately funded by King Charles himself. Ferguson, however, would have to make her own independent living arrangements — leaving her future living arrangements, not least her professional arrangements, unclear as of the time of writing.\n\nIt appeared that the walls had finally closed in for Sarah Ferguson, once Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, after no less than decades of gaffs, gossips, mishaps, indiscretions, misadventures, and many damaging scandals. And yet, as mentioned by Andrew Lownie in the introduction, perhaps the tale is not yet told. As Lownie told Sky News, quote:\n\n\"I think 'never say never' with Fergie. She's a great survivor, she will quietly do things under the radar.\"\n\nBut it also stood significant that the generally mildly-spoken Lownie, a journalist as closely acquainted with the inner workings of the royal family as a non-member could be, also remarked to the *Telegraph* with regard to Ferguson (quoting again):\n\n\"She is very greedy, she is very stupid, and she is very naive. She's drawn into the ambit of these people — predators — like Epstein and she doesn't seem to see this is a problem. She doesn't seem to listen to people who could advise her that these are not people to get involved with.\"\n\nPerhaps several decades were not enough time to have learnt otherwise.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has been involved in numerous scandals throughout her life.\n- Her 1992 toe-sucking scandal with John Bryan significantly damaged her reputation and strained her relationship with the royal family.\n- Ferguson's association with Jeffrey Epstein, including financial support and visits, further tarnished her image and led to her estrangement from the royal family.\n- Despite her scandals, Ferguson has shown resilience and has engaged in various charitable and business ventures, including a partnership with Weight Watchers.\n- Royal historian Andrew Lownie described Ferguson as a survivor who operates under the radar, but also noted her greed, naivety, and poor judgment in her associations.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What was the most serious scandal involving Sarah Ferguson?\n\nThe most serious scandal involving Sarah Ferguson was the 1992 incident in France where she was photographed having her toes sucked by John Bryan, her financial advisor and alleged secret boyfriend, while her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie were present.\n\n### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on Sarah Ferguson's royal status?\n\nThe 1992 scandal led to Sarah Ferguson being removed from royal duties and having most of her privileges withdrawn. Her divorce from Prince Andrew in 1996 resulted in a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might have been expected.\n\n### Who was John Bryan, and what was his role in the 1992 scandal?\n\nJohn Bryan was an American believed to be Sarah Ferguson's secret boyfriend and financial advisor. He was photographed sucking her toes in France in 1992, which sparked a major scandal and led to Ferguson's removal from royal duties.\n\n### What was the public's reaction to the 1992 scandal involving Sarah Ferguson?\n\nThe public reaction was one of embarrassment and outrage. The British tabloid press had a field day, with front pages splashed with grainy images and various insinuations about the nature of the uncovered relationship. The scandal was seen as a humiliating breach of royal decorum and dominated news cycles for days.\n\n### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on the British Monarchy?\n\nThe 1992 scandal involving Sarah Ferguson was particularly unwelcome for the British Monarchy and the Queen, who was already suffering what she later declared her 'annus horribilis.' The scandal eclipsed other royal marriages that had publicly come apart at the seams that same year, including those of Charles and Diana, and Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips.\n\n### What was the nature of Sarah Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws?\n\nSarah Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws was not harmonious. Princess Anne reportedly never liked her sister-in-law and referred to her as an 'Outsider.' Even the Queen and Prince Philip didn't really adore Ferguson, with Philip once calling her 'odd and pointless.'\n\n### What was the significance of the 1988 incident involving Sarah Ferguson's father?\n\nIn 1988, Sarah Ferguson's father, Major Ronald Ferguson, was revealed to be a visitor to the Wigmore Club, a so-called massage parlour in London known to offer sexual services. This scandal caused major embarrassment for the royals and for Sarah, although Ronald denied availing of anything other than simple massages.\n\n### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on Sarah Ferguson's marriage to Prince Andrew?\n\nThe 1992 scandal hardened the royal family against Ferguson in a way that had not been before. The scandal led to her divorce from Prince Andrew in 1996, and she received a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might have been expected.\n\n### What was the nature of Sarah Ferguson's post-divorce career and public image?\n\nAfter her divorce, Sarah Ferguson threw herself into various types of charity work and became the global spokesperson for Weight Watchers. She also published memoirs and children's books, but her charity work and financial dealings were not without significant criticism.\n\n### What was the impact of the Epstein scandal on Sarah Ferguson's relationship with the royal family?\n\nThe Epstein scandal further damaged Sarah Ferguson's relationship with the royal family. It was revealed that she had accepted money from Epstein and had maintained contact with him even after his conviction. This led to multiple charities cutting ties with her and her public image being further tarnished.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Scandal video: Sarah Ferguson: The Duchess of Scandal.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HurO2gOZhY8)\n- [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214047/Fergies-former-lover-John-Bryan-faces-750-000-legal-bill.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214047/Fergies-former-lover-John-Bryan-faces-750-000-legal-bill.html)\n- [https://imsvintagephotos.com/products/sarah-duchess-of-york-newspaper-magazines-pics-vintage-photograph-1611777?srsltid=AfmBOoqImVmQUZqSpN9AO2fUV2yUu97vzdDHgmFEyBsy1xzVxaaMo4uN](https://imsvintagephotos.com/products/sarah-duchess-of-york-newspaper-magazines-pics-vintage-photograph-1611777?srsltid=AfmBOoqImVmQUZqSpN9AO2fUV2yUu97vzdDHgmFEyBsy1xzVxaaMo4uN)\n- [https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/timeline-royal-photo-scandals-m2mbklbd9xn](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/timeline-royal-photo-scandals-m2mbklbd9xn)\n- [https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1465654/princess-anne-news-furious-rant-sarah-ferguson-tears-outsider-royal-family-spt](https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1465654/princess-anne-news-furious-rant-sarah-ferguson-tears-outsider-royal-family-spt)\n- [https://youtu.be/-I13zzJ-WJM?si=VROmaxgLoelHI8QB&t=262](https://youtu.be/-I13zzJ-WJM?si=VROmaxgLoelHI8QB&t=262)\n- [https://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/fergies-toe-suckers-new-revelations-28547224](https://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/fergies-toe-suckers-new-revelations-28547224)\n- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/fergie-feels-need-prince-andrews-staunchest-defender/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/fergie-feels-need-prince-andrews-staunchest-defender/)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/aug/21/duchess-york-northern-moor-estate](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/aug/21/duchess-york-northern-moor-estate)\n- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8699139.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8699139.stm)\n- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6257686/Revealed-Duchess-of-Yorks-US-firm-collapses-with-1m-debts.html](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6257686/Revealed-Duchess-of-Yorks-US-firm-collapses-with-1m-debts.html)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/08/sarah-ferguson-bankrupt-debts-millions](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/08/sarah-ferguson-bankrupt-debts-millions)\n- [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/08/prince-andrew-201108?srsltid=AfmBOoorS36y_NML7Q-k9fgN4_bJCvOgNfj2ABiGShVMLUnQcnsjLFRh](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/08/prince-andrew-201108?srsltid=AfmBOoorS36y_NML7Q-k9fgN4_bJCvOgNfj2ABiGShVMLUnQcnsjLFRh)\n- [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/duchess-of-york-s-huge-error-over-debt-2234931.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/duchess-of-york-s-huge-error-over-debt-2234931.html)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16531752](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16531752)\n- [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/sarah-ferguson-business-misadventures-jt7q3lhx7](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/sarah-ferguson-business-misadventures-jt7q3lhx7)\n- [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/prince-andrew-held-secret-talks-with-wifes-old-toe-sucking-lover-kglr3kj7p](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/prince-andrew-held-secret-talks-with-wifes-old-toe-sucking-lover-kglr3kj7p)\n- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/20/newsid_2499000/2499781.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/20/newsid_2499000/2499781.stm)\n- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI4-yLLxsbM&t=180s&sttick=0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI4-yLLxsbM&t=180s&sttick=0)\n- [https://www.theroyalobserver.com/p/sarah-ferguson-not-attend-prince-philip-funeral](https://www.theroyalobserver.com/p/sarah-ferguson-not-attend-prince-philip-funeral)\n- [https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/shocking-moment-sarah-ferguson-storms-36149811](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/shocking-moment-sarah-ferguson-storms-36149811)\n- [https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1234862823/sarah-ferguson-affair-andrew/](https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1234862823/sarah-ferguson-affair-andrew/)\n- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArCFJaFrmEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArCFJaFrmEI)\n- [https://youtu.be/aECFExk5rO4?si=6HNxbCq5kTAtJA0s&t=139](https://youtu.be/aECFExk5rO4?si=6HNxbCq5kTAtJA0s&t=139)\n- [https://people.com/epstein-claimed-emails-sarah-ferguson-celebrated-prison-release-daughters-report-11833147?](https://people.com/epstein-claimed-emails-sarah-ferguson-celebrated-prison-release-daughters-report-11833147?)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/jeffrey-epstein-threatened-destroy-sarah-ferguson-before-her-apology](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/jeffrey-epstein-threatened-destroy-sarah-ferguson-before-her-apology)\n- [Hero image source](https://images.rawpixel.com/editor_1024/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvcHg4Mzk4NzMtaW1hZ2Uta3d2eGV0bTYuanBn.jpg) by openverse, cc0.\n\n## Related Coverage"
url: https://scandal.pub/article/sarah-ferguson-duchess-of-scandal.md
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datePublished: 2026-06-27
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<!-- aeo:section start="lede" -->
"I think 'never say never' with Fergie. She's a great survivor, she will quietly do things under the radar. And I'm afraid a leopard never changes its spots."

These were the words of Andrew Lownie, royal historian and author of *Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York*. The subject of his words was Sarah Ferguson, formerly Sarah, the Duchess of York, and ex-wife of former Prince Andrew: whose abject fall into disgrace we recently covered in a separate video on this channel.

Lownie delivered his observation in an interview with Sky News in September 2025, and in the wake of yet another in a long list of royal scandals involving Ferguson.

But this one, quite probably, her most serious yet.

<!-- aeo:section end="lede" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="a-scandal-in-france" -->
## A Scandal in France

Summertime, 1992.

In June, Denmark voted against signing the EU's Maastricht Treaty and unexpectedly won the European Championship in football three weeks later. In July, the G7 Summit took place in Munich and the Olympic Games began in Barcelona. And in August, Sarah, Duchess of York was photographed in France having her toes sucked by a man that wasn't her husband.

The photos were published by the *Daily Mirror* and kicked off a ferocious public scandal. This was particularly unwelcome news for the British Monarchy and the Queen personally, who was by that time suffering what she later declared her 'annus horribilis' — a pompous expression for the most challenging year of her reign.

Ferguson — known to the press as 'Fergie' — had been married to the Queen's son Andrew since 1986. Upon their marriage, the couple had become the Duke and Duchess of York — a royal title (or style) bestowed by the Queen, which — in Andrew's case — accompanied his other titles 'the Earl of Inverness' and 'Baron Killyleagh'. Their marriage was also the apex of Ferguson's popularity: within a few years, her image had become tainted by one press scandal after another. We'll get to those in a bit.

The man pictured at the other end of Ferguson's toes that summer day in 1992 was John Bryan, an American believed to be the Duchess' secret boyfriend. He was also her financial advisor, a fact made questionable as much by the photos themselves, as by the fact that Bryan was declared bankrupt in the UK only four years later.

But even more questionable was that Ferguson — at the time — was still married, with her husband Andrew still serving in the Royal Navy and spending large periods of time at sea. The Royal Family had announced their separation earlier in the year, but rumours had swirled of a potential reconciliation which — in the circumstances — would have been a headache relieved for the monarchy. Ferguson had already caused a stir with rumours of infidelity, but John Bryan was not actually the subject of those. As far as the public knew, the relationship between him and the Duchess was simply one of an ordinary clerical acquaintance.

Causing an even greater stir was the nature of the act depicted, as well as Ferguson's topless state of dress and her demeanour, all of which was considered beneath the mannerisms and poise of a serving royal. Perhaps the greatest scandal of all, though, was that the pair had embarked on holiday with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie in tow — Ferguson's daughters with Andrew, then four and two years old — who were present at the time Bryan carried out the infamous act.

The British tabloid press had a field day. After the *Daily Mirror* broke the story with the headline "Fergie's Stolen Kisses", the *Sun* and *Daily Mail* followed suit with coverage of their own. Front pages were splashed with the grainy images, along with various insinuations and inferrals about the nature of the uncovered relationship. Pundits and newspaper columnists lined up to denounce the affair as a humiliating breach of royal decorum, with many framing it as another blow to an already-embattled monarchy. The scandal couldn't really have come at a worse time, as earlier the same year, other royal marriages had publicly come apart at the seams: Charles and Diana's marriage had collapsed in March, and in April Princess Anne's divorce to Captain Mark Phillips was finalised. And yet the toe-sucking scandal eclipsed both of those, dominating news cycles for days and becoming referenced as one of the most damaging personal scandals to hit the royal family for decades.

The scandal led to embarrassment and outrage by the Palace. For Ferguson, the backlash was swift. The photos just so happened to break when the Duchess was back in Britain, visiting her in-laws at one of the royal family's many sprawling estates in Balmoral, Scotland. Prince Philip, not renowned for his composure, reportedly hurled the morning newspaper onto the breakfast room table before his daughter-in-law and stormed out of sight. The Duchess was quickly removed from royal duties, and the Palace also withdrew most of her privileges. When her and Andrew's divorce was finalised four years later, she received a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might otherwise have been — being given around £3 million, which compared limply with Princess Diana's £17 million (plus allowance) following her own divorce from Prince Charles the same year.

The scandal hardened the royal family against Ferguson in a way that had not been before. With that said, the Duchess' previous mishaps weren't all that far from doing so on their own. She had long earned a minor reputation as a social climber, and various public gaffs had earned her consistent, unwelcome newspaper headlines.

In fact, Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws had not been one of roses or harmony almost since the day she'd left Westminster Abbey years earlier, as Prince Andrew's wife.

<!-- aeo:section end="a-scandal-in-france" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="a-major-royal-scandal" -->
## A Major Royal Scandal

Sarah was born in 1959 to Susan and Major Ronald Ferguson, a former British Army Captain and polo enthusiast who was — at some point — instructor to both Prince Philip and Prince Charles.

The family was of aristocratic lineage on both sides, and Sarah later described them as "country gentry with a bit of old money". She was also, by ancestry, distantly related to the royal family and, by extension, her future husband Andrew. Both families were connected by way of Major Ronald and Prince Philip's polo connection, and the Fergusons were also known to Diana and the Spencers by way of their mothers having attended school together.

It was Princess Diana who presented Ferguson to Andrew at Royal Ascot in 1985, and the pair married a year later. Both were held in high esteem by the press — with Andrew riding high off his recent service in the Falklands War and Ferguson seeming to offer relatable charm to a public accustomed to overly-upright royals. But within their showy social sphere, the Ferguson family had already borne an instance of considerable scandal.

Sarah's parents had divorced in 1974, after Susan left the family and moved to none other than Argentina, Britain's later adversary in the 1982 Falklands War. There, she married Héctor Barrantes, a polo player with whom she'd been having an affair. Barrantes automatically became Ferguson's stepfather and went on to enlist in the Argentine army during the war, although he did not fight. Susan remained in Argentina the rest of her life, where she died in a car accident in 1998 and was buried next to Hector, who died of lymphatic cancer eight years previously.

Following her parents' divorce, 15-year-old Sarah and her sister Jane were raised by their father. Ronald found a new wife a year later — also called Susan — and had three more daughters with her. By all accounts, he doted on his children, although his keen emphasis on social standing and connections seemingly wore off on Sarah and the decisions she would make in later life.

After his daughter married into the monarchy, Ronald whole-heartedly embraced the trappings and elevated status that came with proximity to the royal line. He appeared at various public events and in the media, and reportedly once rode so close to the Queen in a procession that he blocked part of the public's view of her — a considerable breach of etiquette for the famously rigid and image-conscious monarchs. He also continued to use the title of "Major" in civilian life, even though he'd achieved the rank of 'captain' while on active military service and "Major" as an honorary rank when he retired in 1968. To use military titles after active service was seen as an outdated practice, albeit not entirely unheard of — Captain Mark Phillips, husband of Princess Anne, did likewise throughout later life.

Yet despite his appetite for social status, it was ironically Ronald who added the next major scandal to the Ferguson family name. In 1988, he was revealed by the *News of the World* to be a visitor to the Wigmore Club, a so-called massage parlour in London which was known to offer sexual services for its members. When the story broke, it caused major embarrassment for the royals and for Sarah, although Ronald denied ever availing of anything other than simple massages at the club. But in a curious parallel with Andrew's bumbling future *Newsnight* interview, he made an unconvincing case by claiming he used the Wigmore (quote) "as a kind of cocoon where I could shut myself away for an hour and think".

The scandal was the first to befall Sarah in her new life as a royal. But very soon, it would be replaced by more scandals entirely of her own.

<!-- aeo:section end="a-major-royal-scandal" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="unfergiable" -->
## Unfergiable

Now, for the early part of her marriage to Andrew, Sarah was generally looked at favorably by the Queen and Prince Philip, if not quite by the rest of the royal household. Princess Anne, for example, reportedly never liked her sister-in-law and referred to her as an 'Outsider'. Admittedly, even the Queen and Philip didn't really adore Ferguson — with Philip once memorably calling her 'odd and pointless.'

Still, the new Duchess displayed an exuberance which seemed to benefit the royal image. She was from a family of relatively good standing and with polo privilege — which seemed to be just about good enough to meet Prince Philip's taste. She was a capable horse rider with an enthusiasm for hunting and fishing — which seemed good enough to satisfy the Queen's taste. And the Duchess was attractive, something appreciated by the public — just as it had been with Princess Diana. So despite the relative social embarrassment caused by her mother's withdrawal to Argentina, for the time being Sarah was (generally) widely held in good standing.

The Duchess and Andrew had two daughters — Beatrice, born in 1988 as the first female royal since Andrew's older sister Anne — and Eugenie, born in 1990. The Princesses automatically became the fifth and sixth in line to the throne, and both royal births were welcomed and positively covered in the British press.

But Ronald's misadventures at the Wigmore club caused a dent in his daughter's good standing with the Palace — certainly with Prince Philip, who refused to have anything more to do with his erstwhile polo buddy. Not only that, but Sarah's bubbly personality — which initially played well to the press — began to work against her when she started to seem unable to turn off the tap. She began to exhibit characteristic signs of lavish living — going on royal trips and staying far beyond the length of time she was supposed to. And in 1988, she accompanied Andrew to the UK/LA Gala in Los Angeles, where she insisted on taking the floor — something, at the time, outside protocol for royal wives. That's when this happened:

[Video reference: 21:03 to 21:19 — Sarah Ferguson making a sexual innuendo remark at the UK/LA Gala]

Despite the chuckles of the audience members present, the remark went down like a lead balloon back home. For a royal to engage in pub talk was one thing, but for a serving, married, female member of the family to make a sexual innuendo in front of a respectable audience and journalists was quite another, going far beyond the pale of what was permissible. The British press responded with derision, describing the California visit as "a brash, vulgar, weak-humoured exhibition by two royals." Buckingham Palace's press service quickly determined that Ferguson was not to be trusted with a microphone in hand, and the episode was the first in a line of poor judgement calls for which the Duchess would later become notorious.

Things soon got starkly worse. Only a year on from both her father's Wigmore debacle and the controversial remark in LA, a friend of Ferguson's was quoted by *People Magazine* in 1989 saying:

"Sarah just isn't the totally committed mother type."

What may have seemed like a harmless remark turned serious when it was reported Ferguson was having an affair with American businessman Steve Wyatt. Even more troubling, the affair reportedly took place at the time the Duchess was pregnant with her second daughter Eugenie. With press interest rising, the royal family were getting just about fed up with Ferguson's constant tabloid fodder, and banned her from any further dealings with Wyatt — who disappeared back to America. But their romance gained its greatest notoriety when pictures of Wyatt with one-year-old Beatrice were leaked and appeared in newspapers in January 1992. This, according to royal historian David Leigh, was enough to spell the end of Ferguson's marriage to Andrew. Two months later, the Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess had separated.

And that was when Ferguson responded with one of her worst decisions yet: by rebounding into the arms of John Bryan, another wealthy Texan and acquaintance of Wyatt's. The release of the toe-sucking images from the south of France and the ensuing media furore only pissed off the Palace like never before. And John Bryan — like her father before and Andrew later — managed to make a bad situation worse, by publicly clarifying: "I wasn't sucking her toes, I was kissing them."

Despite this, he gained the nickname the "Toe-Sucking Lover" and headlines like "Fergie Toe-Job" accompanied the initial *Mirror* piece which broke the story.

With that, the Duchess' standing in the eyes of the royals crumbled and she was quickly shunted away from Balmoral and out of royal service. Her marriage with Andrew officially ended with divorce in 1996, 10 years after their nuptials and after two years of settlement negotiations. As a courtesy, Ferguson was allowed to keep the title "Duchess of York" — but she lost "Her Royal Highness", since a divorced woman who obtained her title through marriage would no longer use it unless specifically permitted (which she wasn't). She was no longer invited to royal events, and generally left to the cold reality of civilian life. The Duchess of York was now, for all intents and purposes, no longer a part of the monarchy — except as the mother of the child princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. With that, she may have faded into obscurity, and this video might have never existed. But she didn't.

In fact, it wasn't long before Ferguson started to appear in the public sphere with greater frequency than ever before. No sooner had her divorce been finalised, than she released a memoir, *My Story*, in 1996. It flopped. The press was critical, framing the book as self-pitying, sensational, and little more than a thin attempt to cash in on besmirching the royal house. Some newspapers highlighted the large advance Ferguson had received, and one reviewer for *The Times* called *My Story* little more than "a protected whinge" and perhaps the "worst book of the decade."

However, Ferguson received a more sympathetic response on the other side of the Atlantic. American reviewers saw her as a wounded figure, isolated by an unforgiving marriage to a navybound royal and simultaneously mistreated by the press and the palace alike. To capitalise on this, Ferguson embarked on a promotional tour to North America where she publicly implied, among other things, that she and Andrew had had an open relationship. She told Oprah Winfrey that the stresses of rigid palace life had ended the honeymoon of her marriage, and that for the few years of their marriage until then, she'd only seen her husband for around 40 days a year. And while in the US, despite the mixed reaction to her book, Ferguson found her most successful venture of all: a lucrative long-term partnership with weight loss company Weight Watchers.

Among the many criticisms Ferguson had been subjected to was in relation to her weight, especially during her pregnancy with Beatrice, during which she was classlessly derided with nicknames like the 'Duchess of Pork" in the British tabloids. So in 1997, Weight Watchers approached her with an avant-garde proposal: to be the face of a healthier, more sustainable approach to food, stress, and body image. Ferguson became the brand's global spokesperson, and remained so for over a decade, during which time Weight Watchers saw a noticeable surge in membership — and the Duchess gained what was her most successful venture in civilian life.

She also threw herself into various types of charity work. As a longtime patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, Ferguson opened specialist units at Middlesex Hospital, University College London, Royal Marsden Hospital and others. She became a patron of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, various women's causes and also AIDS prevention — although the latter briefly led her into some friction with Princess Diana, who'd taken up that particular cause as her own. And in line with Ferguson's own accounts of childhood trauma, she founded children's charities, and announced her aim to raise money for children's causes by way of her self-written children's books. This included the *Budgie the Little Helicopter* series, which ran as a children's television show in the US in the late 1990s on the Fox Network.

With that said, her charity work was not without significant criticism. Some British outlets pointed out that the bulk of the revenue generated by her book sales went into the Duchess' pocket, rather than to the charities — including children's charities — of which she was a patron. Ferguson responded defensively, pointing out that the books constituted a large part of her livelihood and that a figure like Charles could rely on income from the Duchy of Cornwall for his living expenses in a way that she could not. But questions about the misuse of funds — in spite of her charitable efforts — continued.

In the meantime, after an intermittent stint in the US, the Duchess returned to the UK where — despite their divorce and to the great horror of the royal family — she continued to live with Andrew. The pair lived at Sunninghill Park — a large country house in Berkshire which they'd been gifted by the Queen — until 2002, when they moved to the enormous Royal Lodge in Windsor, vacated with the death of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother the same year. This arrangement happened to cause a further stir when Andrew later sold Sunninghill to Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev, for 130% of its asking price. Kulibayev seemingly had no intention of using the mansion, and Sunninghill fell into disrepair before being demolished a decade later.

And yet all this — the strange post-marital relationship, the murky ties to oligarchs — would pale in comparison with what the couple would get up to in the years to follow, as well as to the wanton damage this would cause to the standing of the Royal Family's name.

<!-- aeo:section end="unfergiable" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-skies-darken" -->
## The Skies Darken

Now, if you've watched our recent video on Andrew, formerly Prince Andrew of course, then you'll know exactly what kind of flames his royal life has wound up in as of late 2025.

But the scandal that eventually devoured the former Prince's reputation only began to arise after 2010 — and most acutely in the wake of his ruinous BBC *Newsnight* interview in 2019. For the entire first decade of the 2000s, Andrew carried on as normal as both Prince and the UK's Special Representative for Trade and Investment. His fall from grace was brewing but his reputation, for the time being, lay intact.

This was definitely not so for his ex-wife throughout the same period.

In years post-2000, Sarah Ferguson seemed to lurch from one controversy to another. In 2008, she appeared in a documentary film entitled 'The Duchess in Hull', focusing on obesity in the east English town of Hull. For a well-connected, wealthy royal to document the lives of the less well-off was seen as poor taste, and the documentary received poor reviews. But Ferguson seemed not to learn from the mistake, as the following year, she appeared in 'The Duchess on the Estate', a hugely-controversial, multi-part series in which she visited the deprived neighbourhood of Northern Moor in Manchester. Her rather un-groundbreaking account of drug use, crime and a "lack of community spirit" didn't impress viewers, and the locals of Northern Moor protested against the show's release.

That may have been bad enough, but Ferguson immediately had even bigger fish to fry. Her money troubles were becoming apparent, becoming revealed in a humbling manner in mid-2010.

In May that year, Ferguson met with a wealthy foreign businessman, and offered to sell him access to Andrew — still in his Trade Envoy role at the time — for the princely sum of half a million pounds. But the wealthy foreign businessman turned out to be Mazher Mahmood — alias the Fake Sheikh — an undercover reporter for the *News of the World*, who covertly filmed the entire encounter. The secreted footage recorded Ferguson leaving with £40,000 cash in a briefcase Mahmood had given her as a forward payment. The resulting scandal was, once again, enormous — this time, spilling over to the far side of the Atlantic. *TIME* magazine published an article about the nefarious affair, and ABC News followed suit with a piece of their own. The Royal Family was, again, appalled — and Ferguson was forced to sheepishly issue a statement acknowledging a "serious lapse in judgment". According to the BBC, the scandal just so happened to occur during a period of 'rapprochement' between Ferguson and the royals, a relative calm that was gracelessly blown up by the new revelations. Multiple charities associated with the Duchess severed ties or suspended their engagement, and Prince Andrew also issued a statement of his own — denying any knowledge of the meeting or that he would benefit from it.

In the years that followed, the Fake Sheikh scandal was somewhat curtailed by growing criticism of the stings orchestrated by the *News of the World*. Mahmood was jailed in 2016 for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, with the paper having folded 5 years earlier in the wake of its phone-tapping scandal and various other controversies. But the collapse of one of Ferguson's most consistent media hounds didn't change the scrutiny that had become of her financial interests.

As the Cash for Access scandal raged, it was revealed that Ferguson faced a debt of up to £5 million to the bank, mostly due to poor financial management resulting in enormous overdrafts. Amidst the turmoil, it was also revealed that Hartmoor LLC — a US-registered media company Ferguson had founded to profit from her positive reception in America, had collapsed the previous year with debts of around £650,000. The demise of the company seemed to betray the very financial impropriety suspected to be at the heart of her woes, as the company had occupied an expensive office building in Manhattan despite the Duchess being permanently resident in the UK.

For a person in some way connected to the royal family to be in such financial arrears was yet another source of distaste for the monarchy, the latest in what was by now an inevitable sequence of press blow-ups attributable to the Duchess. But this time, her misadventures would be overshadowed by a new scandal — one facing Andrew directly.

Only a few months on from Mazher Mahmood's sting in 2010, Andrew was photographed in New York with Jeffrey Epstein — who'd been convicted of serious sex offences against minors two years previously. The images were published in March 2011, leading to significant uproar and scrutiny of the pair's relationship. It was soon revealed that Andrew had spent no less than four days with the disgraced financier, during which time he inexplicably chose to stay with Epstein at his mansion in Manhattan. Although this new scandal concerned Andrew the most, Ferguson was — as ever — not far from the coalface. It was further revealed that Epstein had sent her £15,000 to help offset her financial woes — money she'd received in December, amidst her much-publicised economic woes and long after Epstein's conviction and release for offences of the most serious nature. To have accepted money from a known pedophile — not least given Ferguson's long involvement with children's charities — appeared an enormous blunder and self-contradiction, and for the second time in only a year, Ferguson found herself publicly admitting to a gross error of judgement. In an interview with London's *Evening Standard*, she declared that she deeply regretted that Epstein became involved with her in any way, and that (quote):

"I had no idea of the string of other allegations and court cases against him and I am distraught that I should have allowed myself to get out of debt with any help from him when my judgement was clouded."

She made that statement in early March, 2011 — just as the Epstein scandal began to grow teeth. And keep the date in mind, for it would prove her undoing much further down the line.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-skies-darken" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-endgame" -->
## The Endgame?

As the years progressed, Ferguson's seemingly endless sequence of scandals seemed to quieten.

Public scrutiny related to the Epstein connection died down, and her financial woes were seemingly resolved — with the assistance from Andrew and the monarchy — by late 2011. She published another memoir — *Finding Sarah* — the same year, and was once again interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, in the course of which she dubiously explained her decision to accept money from Mazhar Mahmood by claiming she'd been drinking and was (quote) "in the gutter at that moment".

The relative quiet was not without further upheaval, however. During the promotional tour of her book, Ferguson infamously stormed out of an interview with *60 Minutes Australia* when questioned about the Cash-for-Access scandal, even though the presenter — Michael Usher — insisted the topic was consistent with themes described openly in the very same book. The following years saw an international arrest warrant for the Duchess issued by the state of Turkey, which accused her of false pretenses for covertly filming an orphanage during a visit in 2012. And the following years also brought more tabloid appearances, mostly relating to various unsuccessful personal relationships and nefarious investments in several investment schemes.

But all these paled in comparison with her previous scandals and, by-and-large, Ferguson experienced something of a minor rehabilitation with the royals. Having not been invited to the wedding of her nephew-by-marriage Prince William in 2011, she was invited to attend the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle in 2018: which reportedly led to some rancour among the other royals present. But all this relative harmony would change rapidly at the end of the 2010s, when the long-brewing Epstein scandal raised its head once more.

A few years before, one of Epstein's victims — Virginia Giuffre — alleged she'd been trafficked on three occasions to have sex with Prince Andrew in 2001. Giuffre had been only seventeen years old at the time, and the allegations rattled the Prince's reputation and led to increasing public angst against the monarchy. The Palace denied the allegations, but Andrew's denials became the stuff of infamy in 2019 after Epstein — by now in police custody — committed suicide. Andrew blundered through one of the most damaging interviews in history with BBC *Newsnight*, and suddenly, scrutiny of both his and Sarah's relationship with Epstein dramatically intensified like it never had before.

The fallout was immediate, and Andrew was forced to step back from royal duties with swift effect. He retreated to Royal Lodge in an attempt to weather the resulting media firestorm. Somewhat laughably, the Palace turned to none other than John Bryan — Ferguson's former lover — to advise him on how to deal with the furore. This didn't make much sense at all. Not only had Bryan publicly cuckolded Andrew, but he'd managed to contain his own 1992 scandal with remarkable ineffectiveness. He'd sought an injunction to prevent the toe-sucking photos from being published, but failed — much to the horror and lasting embarrassment of Ferguson. He then reportedly embraced the scandal and even sold his story to the press for a quarter of a million pounds. For the Palace to have brought in the headstrong architect of a past scandal to remedy a current one would seem foolhardy. And it was. Several years later, Bryan was covertly recorded lending credence to the allegations made against Andrew and was forced to appear on *Piers Morgan Uncensored* to backtrack on them.

The public turned even further against the Yorks and the years after 2019 only got worse and worse for Andrew and Sarah alike. It was also revealed that she — like Andrew — had visited Epstein in Florida on at least one occasion and the extent of their friendship began to gain ever more suspicion.

In September 2025, the British *Mail on Sunday* revealed leaked emails suggesting that Ferguson had celebrated Epstein's release from prison in 2009 by visiting him in New York with her two daughters. This was bad enough, but only a month later, Giuffre's posthumous memoir, *Nobody's Girl*, was released — in which she repeated her claims about Andrew and went into further detail about the depraved circumstances as a result of Epstein's trafficking. In the wake of the book's publishing, public calls to release all previously withheld information about Epstein rose to deafening pitch. In the US, these centred on the so-called Epstein Files — a body of documents, communications, records, and other investigative materials related to the dead financier's criminal investigations, which public officials were widely called upon to release to the public. And in the UK, public bodies were put under pressure to release all information pertaining to British high officials who'd been in some way involved with him. And with that, even more came to light.

Another leaked email from January 2010 revealed that Ferguson had sought far more than the £15,000 received from Epstein, and had asked instead for "50 or 100,000 US dollars". This seemed to be lent some credit in an unearthed but undated email sent by Epstein to a friend, where he implied that he'd by then bankrolled Ferguson for a total of 15 years. Royal historian Andrew Lownie later stated that the sum of £15,000 was nowhere close to the true figure the Duchess had received from Epstein to offset her financial woes, as was claimed. In an interview with the *Telegraph*, he stated that neither Epstein nor Ferguson would concern themselves with such minor sums and that the true figure was, according to his sources, closer to around £2 million in total. As the news broke, one after another, various charities — from the Teenage Cancer Trust, and the British Heart Foundation — cut ties with Ferguson.

It didn't seem that there could be much more to be revealed about the Epstein scandal to bring Ferguson (or Andrew) into even greater disrepute. But there was. It turned out that Andrew had maintained contact with Epstein into at least February of 2011 — by which time the news of his meeting in New York had started to make waves back home. This uncontestably contradicted his claims to have cut contact with the financier following their New York meeting in December. In Ferguson's case, it was revealed that she'd contacted Epstein even later still, in April 2011, and had — astonishingly — "humbly apologised" for having appeared to distanced herself from him, writing to Epstein that he had been a "steadfast, generous and supreme friend" to her and her family. That particular exchange, as you'll recall from earlier in the video, took place two months after her declaration to the London *Evening Standard* that (quote):

"...I am distraught that I should have allowed myself to get out of debt with any help from him when my judgement was clouded."

Like Andrew, she therefore revealed herself to have been entirely mistruthful regarding her dealings with the disgraced financier. Seemingly, the famously unreliable Duchess's avoidance of Epstein had, instead, lasted just only a handful of weeks. In response, Ferguson claimed Epstein had threatened to ruin her, and that the May 2011 email — along with its flowing praise — had been an attempt to mitigate the damage which might otherwise come her way by his hand. But enough was enough. Between the various allegations and revelations implicating her and Andrew, all of it wreaking more and more destruction still upon the monarchy, this turned out to be the final straw.

On October 30th, 2025, King Charles initiated formal removal of Andrew's "Prince", "Duke of York" titles and honours, leaving him henceforth known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Theoretically, as a commoner, Andrew would be exposed to further criminal or civil cases related to his actions in the past. Furthermore, Andrew and Sarah were obliged to surrender the lease of the Royal Lodge property and relocate elsewhere. Andrew was to be moved to a private property on the royal family's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, in an arrangement privately funded by King Charles himself. Ferguson, however, would have to make her own independent living arrangements — leaving her future living arrangements, not least her professional arrangements, unclear as of the time of writing.

It appeared that the walls had finally closed in for Sarah Ferguson, once Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, after no less than decades of gaffs, gossips, mishaps, indiscretions, misadventures, and many damaging scandals. And yet, as mentioned by Andrew Lownie in the introduction, perhaps the tale is not yet told. As Lownie told Sky News, quote:

"I think 'never say never' with Fergie. She's a great survivor, she will quietly do things under the radar."

But it also stood significant that the generally mildly-spoken Lownie, a journalist as closely acquainted with the inner workings of the royal family as a non-member could be, also remarked to the *Telegraph* with regard to Ferguson (quoting again):

"She is very greedy, she is very stupid, and she is very naive. She's drawn into the ambit of these people — predators — like Epstein and she doesn't seem to see this is a problem. She doesn't seem to listen to people who could advise her that these are not people to get involved with."

Perhaps several decades were not enough time to have learnt otherwise.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-endgame" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has been involved in numerous scandals throughout her life.
- Her 1992 toe-sucking scandal with John Bryan significantly damaged her reputation and strained her relationship with the royal family.
- Ferguson's association with Jeffrey Epstein, including financial support and visits, further tarnished her image and led to her estrangement from the royal family.
- Despite her scandals, Ferguson has shown resilience and has engaged in various charitable and business ventures, including a partnership with Weight Watchers.
- Royal historian Andrew Lownie described Ferguson as a survivor who operates under the radar, but also noted her greed, naivety, and poor judgment in her associations.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What was the most serious scandal involving Sarah Ferguson?

The most serious scandal involving Sarah Ferguson was the 1992 incident in France where she was photographed having her toes sucked by John Bryan, her financial advisor and alleged secret boyfriend, while her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie were present.

### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on Sarah Ferguson's royal status?

The 1992 scandal led to Sarah Ferguson being removed from royal duties and having most of her privileges withdrawn. Her divorce from Prince Andrew in 1996 resulted in a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might have been expected.

### Who was John Bryan, and what was his role in the 1992 scandal?

John Bryan was an American believed to be Sarah Ferguson's secret boyfriend and financial advisor. He was photographed sucking her toes in France in 1992, which sparked a major scandal and led to Ferguson's removal from royal duties.

### What was the public's reaction to the 1992 scandal involving Sarah Ferguson?

The public reaction was one of embarrassment and outrage. The British tabloid press had a field day, with front pages splashed with grainy images and various insinuations about the nature of the uncovered relationship. The scandal was seen as a humiliating breach of royal decorum and dominated news cycles for days.

### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on the British Monarchy?

The 1992 scandal involving Sarah Ferguson was particularly unwelcome for the British Monarchy and the Queen, who was already suffering what she later declared her 'annus horribilis.' The scandal eclipsed other royal marriages that had publicly come apart at the seams that same year, including those of Charles and Diana, and Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips.

### What was the nature of Sarah Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws?

Sarah Ferguson's relationship with her in-laws was not harmonious. Princess Anne reportedly never liked her sister-in-law and referred to her as an 'Outsider.' Even the Queen and Prince Philip didn't really adore Ferguson, with Philip once calling her 'odd and pointless.'

### What was the significance of the 1988 incident involving Sarah Ferguson's father?

In 1988, Sarah Ferguson's father, Major Ronald Ferguson, was revealed to be a visitor to the Wigmore Club, a so-called massage parlour in London known to offer sexual services. This scandal caused major embarrassment for the royals and for Sarah, although Ronald denied availing of anything other than simple massages.

### What was the impact of the 1992 scandal on Sarah Ferguson's marriage to Prince Andrew?

The 1992 scandal hardened the royal family against Ferguson in a way that had not been before. The scandal led to her divorce from Prince Andrew in 1996, and she received a much-reduced financial settlement compared to what might have been expected.

### What was the nature of Sarah Ferguson's post-divorce career and public image?

After her divorce, Sarah Ferguson threw herself into various types of charity work and became the global spokesperson for Weight Watchers. She also published memoirs and children's books, but her charity work and financial dealings were not without significant criticism.

### What was the impact of the Epstein scandal on Sarah Ferguson's relationship with the royal family?

The Epstein scandal further damaged Sarah Ferguson's relationship with the royal family. It was revealed that she had accepted money from Epstein and had maintained contact with him even after his conviction. This led to multiple charities cutting ties with her and her public image being further tarnished.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Scandal video: Sarah Ferguson: The Duchess of Scandal.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HurO2gOZhY8)
- [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214047/Fergies-former-lover-John-Bryan-faces-750-000-legal-bill.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5214047/Fergies-former-lover-John-Bryan-faces-750-000-legal-bill.html)
- [https://imsvintagephotos.com/products/sarah-duchess-of-york-newspaper-magazines-pics-vintage-photograph-1611777?srsltid=AfmBOoqImVmQUZqSpN9AO2fUV2yUu97vzdDHgmFEyBsy1xzVxaaMo4uN](https://imsvintagephotos.com/products/sarah-duchess-of-york-newspaper-magazines-pics-vintage-photograph-1611777?srsltid=AfmBOoqImVmQUZqSpN9AO2fUV2yUu97vzdDHgmFEyBsy1xzVxaaMo4uN)
- [https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/timeline-royal-photo-scandals-m2mbklbd9xn](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/timeline-royal-photo-scandals-m2mbklbd9xn)
- [https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1465654/princess-anne-news-furious-rant-sarah-ferguson-tears-outsider-royal-family-spt](https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1465654/princess-anne-news-furious-rant-sarah-ferguson-tears-outsider-royal-family-spt)
- [https://youtu.be/-I13zzJ-WJM?si=VROmaxgLoelHI8QB&amp;t=262](https://youtu.be/-I13zzJ-WJM?si=VROmaxgLoelHI8QB&amp;t=262)
- [https://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/fergies-toe-suckers-new-revelations-28547224](https://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/fergies-toe-suckers-new-revelations-28547224)
- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/fergie-feels-need-prince-andrews-staunchest-defender/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/fergie-feels-need-prince-andrews-staunchest-defender/)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/aug/21/duchess-york-northern-moor-estate](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/aug/21/duchess-york-northern-moor-estate)
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8699139.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8699139.stm)
- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6257686/Revealed-Duchess-of-Yorks-US-firm-collapses-with-1m-debts.html](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6257686/Revealed-Duchess-of-Yorks-US-firm-collapses-with-1m-debts.html)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/08/sarah-ferguson-bankrupt-debts-millions](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/08/sarah-ferguson-bankrupt-debts-millions)
- [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/08/prince-andrew-201108?srsltid=AfmBOoorS36y_NML7Q-k9fgN4_bJCvOgNfj2ABiGShVMLUnQcnsjLFRh](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/08/prince-andrew-201108?srsltid=AfmBOoorS36y_NML7Q-k9fgN4_bJCvOgNfj2ABiGShVMLUnQcnsjLFRh)
- [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/duchess-of-york-s-huge-error-over-debt-2234931.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/duchess-of-york-s-huge-error-over-debt-2234931.html)
- [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16531752](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16531752)
- [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/sarah-ferguson-business-misadventures-jt7q3lhx7](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/sarah-ferguson-business-misadventures-jt7q3lhx7)
- [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/prince-andrew-held-secret-talks-with-wifes-old-toe-sucking-lover-kglr3kj7p](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/prince-andrew-held-secret-talks-with-wifes-old-toe-sucking-lover-kglr3kj7p)
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/20/newsid_2499000/2499781.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/20/newsid_2499000/2499781.stm)
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI4-yLLxsbM&amp;t=180s&amp;sttick=0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI4-yLLxsbM&amp;t=180s&amp;sttick=0)
- [https://www.theroyalobserver.com/p/sarah-ferguson-not-attend-prince-philip-funeral](https://www.theroyalobserver.com/p/sarah-ferguson-not-attend-prince-philip-funeral)
- [https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/shocking-moment-sarah-ferguson-storms-36149811](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/shocking-moment-sarah-ferguson-storms-36149811)
- [https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1234862823/sarah-ferguson-affair-andrew/](https://stylecaster.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/1234862823/sarah-ferguson-affair-andrew/)
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArCFJaFrmEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArCFJaFrmEI)
- [https://youtu.be/aECFExk5rO4?si=6HNxbCq5kTAtJA0s&amp;t=139](https://youtu.be/aECFExk5rO4?si=6HNxbCq5kTAtJA0s&amp;t=139)
- [https://people.com/epstein-claimed-emails-sarah-ferguson-celebrated-prison-release-daughters-report-11833147?](https://people.com/epstein-claimed-emails-sarah-ferguson-celebrated-prison-release-daughters-report-11833147?)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/jeffrey-epstein-threatened-destroy-sarah-ferguson-before-her-apology](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/jeffrey-epstein-threatened-destroy-sarah-ferguson-before-her-apology)
- [Hero image source](https://images.rawpixel.com/editor_1024/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvcHg4Mzk4NzMtaW1hZ2Uta3d2eGV0bTYuanBn.jpg) by openverse, cc0.

<!-- aeo:section end="sources" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="related-coverage" -->
## Related Coverage
<!-- aeo:section end="related-coverage" -->