Prince Philip has often been said to have vowed never to be in the same room as Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of his son Andrew, after photos appeared in a newspaper in 1992 of Sarah topless and her toes sucked by a lover in the house. south. from France.
Gyles Brandreth, Philip’s official biographer whose book The last portrait will be published later this month, that long-standing rumor has confirmed today in the second full-length excerpt from his book.
Philip, he said, stated “enough was enough” after the photos appeared. He told Brandreth that Fergie was “just out of bounds” and decided not to have anything to do with her anymore.
When the photos were first published, Sarah was staying on the Queen’s Scottish estate, Balmoral. Philip immediately put his resolution into action, as Ferguson himself said to Brandreth: “It was ridiculous. As soon as I entered through one door, he fell over the corgis to come out of the other. It was very funny. Except, of course it wasn’t. “
Although the Queen continued to receive Fergie even after her divorce and subsequent divorce from Prince Andrew, Philip made it clear that he did not want to see her again.
Sarah said plaintively to Brandreth, “Of course I want to see him. After all, I am the mother of his granddaughters. “
Brandreth said that when he brought this up to Prince Philip, he simply shrugged and said, “But the children come and stay,” adding, “I’m not vindictive, but I don’t see the point.”
He described Andrew and Sarah’s post-divorce arrangements, which kept them sharing a home, as “really bizarre,” adding, “I don’t pretend I understand.”
Brandreth writes that Fergie and Philip had diametrically opposed views of “bottling up your feelings,” which she thought was positively harmful.
Brandreth writes that when her daughters were children, she would tell them to stand and scream in the middle of the expansive grounds of their home, Sunninghill Park.
Brandreth wrote that Sarah then demonstrated and caught him off guard when she let out a blood-curdling scream.
He writes: “The prospect of running into his former daughter-in-law screaming in the middle of Sunninghill Park could be one of the reasons why the Duke of Edinburgh decided to give her a wide berth following her divorce from Prince Andrew. He viewed restraint as a virtue and self-control as a quality to be admired. “
Philip did not sit down for the 2011 six-partner on the Oprah Winfrey Network Find Sarah, in which Fergie cried on-screen with a TV psychiatrist. He told Brandreth that he was for ‘self-awareness’, but against ‘the endless introspection that seems to be so widespread these days’. As reported on Monday, he considered Harry and Meghan’s decision to conduct a similar interview as “insanity.”
Fergie, Brandreth reports, tried to mend the relationship with Philip, but was constantly rejected.
For Philip’s 80th birthday, she sent him “a nice dinner.” But even here fate conspired against her, Brandreth writes: “It should have had 12 settings, but it came with 13: the ‘sample’ was included with the set. Somehow something always goes wrong with Sarah. “
Philip’s promise to never be in the same room as Fergie was only broken when they both attended Prince Harry’s wedding at Windsor Castle in May 2018.