Swept up in ongoing controversy, Sarah Ferguson’s reported love of excess and luxury has been brought under the microscope – as she is poised to move out of her home of Royal Lodge
Sarah Ferguson’s life in the midst of the royal fold has come crashing to an end, firmly putting an end to decades of the excess she has long enjoyed. A shock statement from Buckingham Palace saw the news announced that both Andrew and Sarah were being formally removed of their royal titles, and would be moving out of their shared home of Royal Lodge.
Despite divorcing in the mid-1990s, Andrew and Sarah have remained close, but when Andrew moves out of his 30-room property on the Windsor estate, Sarah, it is understood, will not be going with him. Though she has had to make her own money for nearly 30 years since her marriage ended, Sarah’s finances have long been under scrutiny, with an explosive new royal book released over the summer detailing her apparent love of excess, even alleging that the late Queen had to bail her out of huge debts more than once.
Sarah has also admitted to borrowing money from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, loving “freebies” that included lavish international trips and spending well beyond her means. The duchess allegedly ordered her staff to make her such excessive dinners every night, that it would put even historic kings like Henry VIII to shame.
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The book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, by Andrew Lownie, alleges that Sarah’s spending habits remained excessive long after her marriage was over, in microscopic detail. One former staff member who worked for Sarah claimed that her finances were often in disarray due to her “greed and wastefulness”.
“Every night she demands a whole side of beef, a leg of lamb, and a chicken,” the former staffer said. “Which are laid out on the dining room table like a medieval banquet. It’s a feast that would make Henry VIII proud.
“But often there is just her and her girls Bea and Eugenie and most of it is wasted. There is no attempt to keep it, to have cold, the next day. It just sits there all night, and the next day it’s thrown away,” the staff member, who had been sacked, continued.
The author further claimed that after leaving the banquet worth of roast dinners to go to waste, Fergie and her daughters would instead opt for snack food, leaving the meats rotting on the table. “Sometimes the meals would go virtually untouched while the duchess and her daughters munched away at large bags of Kettle crisps,” the book claimed.
This was only one example of the excessive lifestyle lead by the former royal detailed in the bombshell book. Allegations were made that Sarah relentlessly splurged on holidays, flowers, wine and more staff than she really needed, in what Lownie dubbed a life of “opulent excess”.
Fergie has previously admitted that she is “terrible with money” and at one stage is alleged to have been bailed out by the late Queen to the tune of £500,000 when Coutts bank demanded her debts be cleared within 14 days.
