Back in 1994, interviewer Ruby Wax spoke to Sarah Ferguson about how it felt to join the Royal Family – and the shocking mistakes that saw her lose her royal status
In an unearthed interview, Sarah Ferguson revealed her true feelings about marrying Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – or Prince Andrew as he was then known. In the intimate and relaxed setting of her own home, Sarah makes a pot of tea as she speaks openly about joining the Royal Family.
The interview, filmed in 1994 as part of the Ruby Wax Meets series, has resurfaced after the American broadcaster uploaded it to her own Ruby Wax YouTube Channel. At the time, Sarah’s public profile was still overshadowed by the scandal of her relationship with American financial manager John Bryan, who had been photographed kissing her feet as she sunbathed topless.
Sarah and Andrew finalised their divorce in 1996, after previously announcing their separation in 1992. But, while opening up to Ruby, she still spoke in glowing terms about her ex. Asked whether she “got what she always wanted” after marrying a prince, Sarah said she wanted “the man,” but not necessarily all the trappings of royalty.
“Who cares about the furniture when you’ve got the man,” she said, “I’m not materialistic.” Walking into Buckingham Palace for the first time, she said, is an intense experience.
“Adrenaline runs overtime, big time,” she recalled, adding: “It’s absolutely terrifying.”
Andrew and Sarah never actually lived at the Palace, preferring instead to spend their marital life at Sunninghill Park – a 665-acre estate near Ascot in Berkshire. But she still recalls the strict protocols at the Palace, even down to how far the windows could be opened.
“In summer, you long to open the windows right up, but you’re only allowed to open them so much, because you must keep the line of the windows at the same level.”
Reflecting on her fling with John Bryan, Sarah admitted: “I had the most appalling character judgement, and with John – he’s a very believable person. I didn’t know I was playing with fire.”
She confessed that throughout much of her life she was “completely unaware” of what was going on around her, saying that she looked back on her previous actions and marvelled at how “silly” she was.
Sarah blamed many of her past mistakes on feelings of “abandonment.” Her parents divorced in 1974, when Sarah was 15, and a year later, her mother Susan left the UK and settled in Argentina with her new husband, polo player Héctor Barrantes.
She told how, when she went to visit her mother in Argentina, she was intimidated by Argentinian girls of her age, who all seemed to her to be tall, slim and attractive.
At 16, she began to experiment with slimming pills and injections. Her first experience was bizarre, she says: “It was in this small village in the middle of South America – can you imagine how crazy I was to do that? – no prescription, nothing.”
She admits that she has no idea exactly what she was injected with, but the slimming drug “changed her into another person.”
Whether it was the direct effect of the medication or not, Sarah was unable to say. But shortly afterwards, she recalled: “I got so angry with my mum, I nearly drew a knife on her.”
Even though she ceased the slimming treatments after a few days, Sarah was convinced that the toxic side-effects of the drugs stayed with her for years.
Combined with her abandonment issues, the slimming treatments sent her into a self-destructive spiral: “Because I had such self-loathing,” she told Ruby, “I wanted to prove to myself that I was this awful person.”
Eventually, she said, it was meeting and marrying Andrew that saved her. But even after the dissolution of that marriage, she still felt as if he was her “best friend.” Coyly avoiding the much-rumoured question of whether they would ever remarry, she said: “I think we just take each day as it comes.”
Now, over 30 years on from that cosy afternoon chat, Sarah and Andrew are further apart then ever, with the disgraced former prince brooding in a Norfolk farmhouse, while his ex-wife reportedly flits between health spas around the world, seeking to leave behind the ignominy of the former couple’s close friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – a friendship that has sparked the downfall of the Yorks.
