Sarah Ferguson is at the centre of a fallout over an email she sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 emerged – the same year as her ‘train wreck’ interview with a reporter who later opened up about it
It has been a week to forget for Sarah Ferguson after a number of charities dropped her as patron following the leaking of an email to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duchess of York emailed the notorious sex predator weeks after promising never to speak with him again. Saying sorry to Epstein, she wrote: “I did not use the P word about you.”
She argued the email was sent after legal action was threatened by Epstein, with the secret correspondence gave a rare glimpse into her private life.
One man who has had private dealings with Sarah off camera is veteran Australian television presenter Michael Usher. He had a car crash interview with Sarah in 2011, the same year she sent the email to Epstein, for 60 Minutes Australia. It got so heated, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife stormed off.
Last year, Michael went on Nova 96.9’s Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie where he discussed his awkward dealings with the Duchess.
Offering 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 the uncomfortable interview about her memoir Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, Sarah told him: “Don’t try and trick me now because I am not going to play this game. Delete that bit.”
Things had got heated after Michael asked Sarah to watch undercover footage where she offered to sell access to former partner Andrew for large sums of money.
After the interview eventually finished, Michael and his crew went outside, before the Duchess apparently ran after him.
Recalling the bizarre moment, Michael, who described 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.”
Michael said at a different time that the interview was a “train wreck” and added: “She walked out on me three or four times. It was absolutely horrendous.”
In recent years, the Duchess has enjoyed public speaking and book writing and last year she published a children’s story called Flora and Fern .
