Sarah Ferguson has had a week to forget after several charities dropped her as patron following the leak of an email she sent to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duchess of York had emailed the infamous sex offender weeks after vowing never to communicate with him again. In her apology to Epstein, she wrote: “I did not use the P word about you.”
She claimed the email was sent in response to legal threats from Epstein, and the covert correspondence offered a rare insight into her private life.
One individual who has had personal interactions with Sarah off-screen is seasoned Australian TV presenter Michael Usher. He conducted a disastrous interview with Sarah in 2011, the same year she sent the email to Epstein, for 60 Minutes Australia.
The situation became so tense that Prince Andrew’s ex-wife stormed off.
Last year, Michael appeared on Nova 96.9’s Fitzy and Wippa with Kate Ritchie where he discussed his uncomfortable encounters with the Duchess.
Providing some insight, he said: “I had to call her Duchess. She wouldn’t let me call her Sarah, lots and lots of airs and graces.
“But she was fine, and she was relatively sweet. But then there was just this moment…she turned and getting her back into the chair, was crazy.
“She came back and she continued the interview, and then it was like a different personality again.”
During a tense interview about her memoir, Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, Sarah warned the interviewer: “Don’t try and trick me now because I am not going to play this game. Delete that bit.”
The atmosphere became heated after Michael asked Sarah to watch undercover footage where she offered to sell access to her ex-partner Andrew for large sums of money.
After the interview finally concluded, Michael and his crew stepped outside, only to be followed by the Duchess.
Recalling the peculiar incident, Michael, who referred to the encounter as a “hot mess”, said: “We walked outside, and the Duchess came running up behind me. She chucked her heels off and she’s in her stockings on the lawn. Going ‘Michael, how was that?’
“By that stage, I just said, ‘Sarah, if I were you, I’d be asking to go back into the room and do that interview all over again, because I don’t know what happened.’
“Then she goes, ‘Oh, well, anyway, who wants to sign some books? I’ll sign your book for you. And now, what are your kids names?’ And off she went from there.”
At another time, Michael described the interview as a “train wreck” and added: “She walked out on me three or four times. It was absolutely horrendous.”
In recent years, the Duchess has been involved in public speaking and writing books, and last year she published a children’s story called Flora and Fern.
