PHIL DAMPIER OPINION
She is now a ticking time bomb ready to explode under the royal family.
Sarah Ferguson has written autobiographies and given interviews before but news that she may accept a six-figure sum to talk to chat show Queen Oprah Winfrey, and may even write a tell-all new book, will send shivers down the spines of King Charles, Prince William and senior courtiers.
So how have we got to this perilous place?
Up until recently, the policy was to keep Fergie on the inside, inviting her to family holidays at Balmoral and Sandringham at Christmas, even though she and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor divorced nearly 30 years ago.
But all that changed when the former Duke and Duchess of York were stripped of their titles and privileges following a wealth of evidence about their relationship with dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The pair have been cast out, but I fear the mistakes of the past will be repeated.
Fergie always claimed that she was given a derisory divorce settlement, receiving a fraction of the £17 million [AU$34 million] given to Princess Diana when they both divorced in 1996.
Now, she is once again broke and backed into a corner where she may feel she has nothing to lose.
Just a couple of months ago, she sold a house in swanky London district Belgravia for an $800,000 loss.
Around 10,000 copies of her new children’s book are to be pulped by publishers.
While Andrew has been offered the run of a cottage on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, Sarah so far has no home to go to.
The money has run out — not for the first time — and I’m told she has been drowning her sorrows with pink Laurent Perrier champagne holed up in Royal Lodge, the Windsor home they have to quit soon.
A month ago, friends said Fergie was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but she has always been the comeback Queen and she will dust herself down and start again, which is why the royals should be worried.
Sarah really does know where all the bodies are buried and if she goes completely rogue any interview and book about her decades in royal circles could make Harry and Meghan’s outpourings look like a vicar’s tea party!
Her immediate aim is to find somewhere to live, possibly Portugal near her daughter Eugenie, Australia with her sister Jane, or in a converted cowshed on daughter Beatrice’s $7 million Cotswolds estate.
I think it’s more likely she will try to buy another house in London, where prices have plummeted, but she needs to replenish the coffers.
PR expert Georgina Heffernan says the royals have made a fatal mistake in making Fergie feel like an outcast, treated differently from Andrew.
“They had one job and that was to neutralise the threat she poses, without turning her into an active enemy with a revenge narrative,” she said.
“Somehow no one at Buckingham Palace saw it coming.
“Either they’re blissfully strategising in an alternative universe, or they genuinely believed she’d quietly fade away after 40 years of collecting receipts.
“Spoiler alert : Babe NO!”
Fergie’s PR man James Henderson says: “She has had battle after battle, and she has done so much for so many people.”
Maybe, maybe not, but from now on she will be looking after number one.
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