I've always been fascinated by Sarah Ferguson or the Duchess of York, depending on which moniker you prefer. She nearly always lets me down though. Let me explain.
When she first exploded on the scene and married Prince Andrew, I thought the exuberant redhead was a lot of fun in a public school girl type way - gungho with lashings of ginger beer. She blew a breath of fresh air through the stuffy old royal establishment. I loved her wedding dress. It fizzed with her energy and character, with all those bees and butterflies on the train. It was far better than Diana's crumpled meringue.
Then it all went horribly wrong. There was the toe sucking business with that revolting Bryant character; Prince Philip called her "worthless", she was divorced, virtually bankrupt and scuttled off to America. Every now and then pictures would surface where she was looking sad at the prospect of her daughters spending Christmas with the Windsors while she was cloistered away in some lodge at the bottom of the garden like an unwanted gnome.
Now matter how much she was derided - and she was - she really turned over a new leaf in America and as a spokesperson for WeightWatchers she has earned respect, her own money and a trim figure which she's kept for over a decade. Her ex-husband meanwhile is still seen as something of a buffoon, travelling the world's golf courses in some tenuous DTI role and carrying on like an ageing lothario.
During this time she's had very little romantic interest, except for some ageing count: unless she's managed to get rid of the paraparazzi, which I very much doubt.
The reason for this becomes clear in an interview in Psychologies magazine. Using the psycho-babble that she always seems to spout, Sarah says that she still hasn't learnt to love herself, so she can't expect someone else to love her.
The magazine points out it's as if she's still trying to atone.
Oh Sarah. I wish you would lighten up. She looks so serious in the photos! Where is that sparky redhead? I wish she could meet someone and have some joy in her life. But she needs to turn her back on all the psychobabble, she really does. Last time she was on TV, it was being interviewed by Pamela Connolly (a psychologist). Sarah, like a lot of needy people, succumbs all too easily to the arguments about how her early years, and a mother abandoning her family, ruined her life. She talks too much about how she put on a mask, how she's now her real self. Stop analysing yourself Sarah and start living! All too soon it becomes too late.
