THE moment I read The Sun’s report on Sarah Ferguson suffering from breast cancer, I texted my good friend of nearly 30 years.
“Just seen the news,” I wrote, “so sorry you’ve been through such a scary time – sending you love and support, and continued success with your treatment.”
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“Time to heal and nurture me now!” Sarah replied, minutes later. “Hopefully caught in time x thank you.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard her speak about the need to put herself before others, and it took a life-threatening moment to do it.
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Sarah echoed the same sentiment in her podcast Tea Talks with entrepreneur Sarah Thompson in which she said: “I’m taking this as a real gift to change my life – to nurture myself. To stop trying to fix everyone else.”
It’s typical of her to instantly try to turn such a negative experience into a positive, but very untypical of her to suspend her astoundingly selfless instincts and focus instead on helping herself.
I’m very glad she is though, because the world’s a better place with a healthy vibrant Sarah Ferguson in it.
She’s one of my favourite people; incredibly kind and empathetic, absurdly generous, endearingly modest, hilariously fun-loving, and ferociously loyal.
Yes, she’s flawed and prone to dropping massive clangers, but so are all my favourite people.
I first met ‘Fergie’ in 1996 at the instigation of Princess Diana who begged me to “go a bit easier” on her scandal-engulfed sister-in-law when I was editor of the Daily Mirror.
“She’s her own worst enemy,” I said.
“I know,” sighed Diana, “but she means well, she has a big heart.”
‘Great fun, very warm and natural’
Soon afterwards, I had lunch with Sarah, and we instantly hit it off.
She was great fun, very warm and natural, but said her recent divorce from Andrew, following revelations like her being caught having her toes sucked by a Texan tycoon lover, had left her feeling “very bruised” and admitted: “I wish I could turn the clock back, but I can’t. I know I’ve made mistakes, but I have learned my lesson. I just want a fair crack of the whip as I try to put things right again. I’m only human you know.”
I came away really liking her and feeling genuinely sorry for her.
A few months later, Sarah invited me to a raucous dinner at a London restaurant where she drank like a fish – as did I! – laughed with a deafeningly naughty Amanda Holden-style cackle, repeatedly slapped me on the back with increasing ferocity as she cracked ribald jokes at my expense, and got more and more hilariously indiscreet as the evening wore on, even at one point declaring her undying love for emerging golf superstar Tiger Woods.
(When I mentioned that Sylvester Stallone had begged me to fix him up on a date with her, exclaiming, “Now there’s a real woman, I’ve always wanted to bed a royal broad,” she shook her head and giggled: “Oh, he’s not my type at all. Tiger’s much more like it.”)
It was a fantastically entertaining night though also tinged with sadness.
When I asked if she’d seen Diana recently, her mood suddenly changed.
“No, she won’t talk to me because I put in my book that I once caught verrucas after borrowing her shoes, and said I thought Charles was an extraordinary man, which he is. Diana just cut me off.”
Three months later, the Princess was dead, with the rift still unrepaired.
Later, Sarah told me: “Diana would have come back to me, I know that, but she never got the chance and now I miss her so much.”
It was one of many blows Sarah’s endured in her life including the untimely death of her mother Susan – who accompanied her to Diana’s funeral – just a year later, also in a car crash.
She also suffered from decades of eating disorders, not helped by cruel ‘Duchess of Pork’ media mockery about her fluctuating weight, and endless lurid headlines about her chaotic sex life and financial affairs.
Throughout it all, she told me the royals who treated her best were the late Queen Elizabeth II, her ex-husband, and our new King Charles and Queen Camilla.
“Camilla always makes sure that my girls are OK at functions if I’m not there,” she once told me. “Which is very sweet of her.”
Andrew’s unstinting support in her darkest times explains why she’s so steadfast in supporting him over his own recent scandals.
‘Changed my life’
As our friendship developed, so did the fun.
At one party, she was sat with Jack Nicholson and when I asked her how I could get to talk to my movie hero, she advised: “Don’t tell him you’re a journalist, for God’s sake. Just say you’re something interesting like a bank robber.”
So, I said to him: “Jack, Fergie says if I tell you I’m a bank robber, you’ll talk to me.”
He smirked. “She said that?”
Pause.
“Well, you know what they say about bank robbers…. you never catch a good one. See ya later, pal.”
A decade later, she did something which was to change my life.
I’d reached the finale of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice USA show in 2008 and had to source big prizes for a charity auction and people to pay big money for them.
I visited Sarah, working in New York at the time, to ask for help.
“Hello, you old devil!” she cried, smacking me heartily on the back (again!) and quickly agreeing to offer a royal tea with herself as a prize.
Then I asked: “Who’s the most generous person you know in this city?”
“Howard Lutnick,” she replied, without hesitation.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s the boss of Cantor Fitzgerald, who had the top four floors of One World Trade Center when it went down on 9/11, killing over 650 of his employees, including his brother. Since then, he’s raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the victims’ families.”
She phoned Howard and he said he’d come to the auction that night.
When it started, with Trump sitting in the front row, bidding for tea with the Duchess reached $10,000 before a balding besuited man stepped forward and bellowed: “$100,000.”
It was Howard Lutnick.
My second prize was dinner with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.
“I’ll go another $100,000,” said Howard, winking at me.
‘Brutal self-honesty’
My opponent, US country singer Trace Adkins, crumpled in the face of his inevitable defeat, as Trump burst out laughing and fist-pumped me.
I won, mainly thanks to Sarah Ferguson who’d gone out of her way to help a former tabloid editor who’d once made her life miserable.
As a result, I landed Larry King’s prime-time slot at CNN, which was a massive career boost, and when I later interviewed her on the show, Sarah walked around the studio personally greeting all the stunned camera crew.
Very few stars do that.
Just as very few have her brutal self-honesty.
When she was caught in a fake-Sheikh newspaper sting trying to inappropriately profit from her royal status, we dined in Manhattan with her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
“You sent mum our favourite message after the scandal,” said Beatrice. “Everyone else was saying stuff like ‘chin up’, but you just wrote, ‘Dear Fergie, half the world’s starving and I still like you, love Piers’.”
The whole table roared.
“I suppose you think I was a complete idiot?” asked Sarah.
“Yes,” I replied. “You were.”
She smiled ruefully.
“I know.”
But the other thing I saw that night was what a great mother she is.
Beatrice and Eugenie are both delightful young ladies – polite, unassuming, and full of fun like their mum.
As Oprah Winfrey messaged me after seeing our CNN interview: “Piers, you’re right about Sarah. Good person. Great mom.”
During the Covid pandemic hit, Sarah spotted a tweet I posted about a young NHS nurse and mum-of-three who’d died from the virus and texted me: “I would like to call the family and help them.”
She does that all the time, for so many people.
Now she’s facing her own battle for life, and I wish my wonderfully ebullient friend all the luck in the world and a full, speedy recovery.
She deserves it.
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