by Kitty Kelley
Shortly after his wedding, Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, called the Daily Mail’s gossip columnist to own up to an extramarital fling with a former girlfriend days before her story appeared in the tabloids. Spencer’s story became a front-page scandal in Britain. “I have caused my wife more grief than I would wish her to have in a lifetime with me,” he said, “and I accept full responsibility for the folly of my actions. Now, after the birth of our baby, we are deeply in love and our marriage is the most important thing in our lives.”
He later said that his wife, the former model Victoria Lockwood, was deeply disturbed and suffered from anorexia nervosa and alcoholism. She required treatment at a detoxification center and was institutionalized for three months for what her husband described as “serious psychological problems.” Yet in a speech at his birthday party, Charles Spencer, known as “Champagne Charlie” before his marriage, seemed insensitive to his wife’s problems. He told his guests that his father had advised him to find a wife who would stick by him through thick and thin. “Well,” he said, “those of you who know Victoria know that she’s thick—and she certainly is thin.” Within six years the couple, who had four children, separated.
Publicly the Duchess of York stood by her father after he was caught in the massage parlor, but she complained bitterly to friends that she felt soiled by his scandal. She said that his adverse publicity had affected her chances of attracting the charity work she needed to rehabilitate herself. She felt that “the galloping Major,” as he began calling himself, made her look less than respectable. Organizations seeking royal patronage, especially those that needed to raise money and maintain a worthy profile, avoided her. The Princess of Wales was patron to 120 charities; the Duchess of York had only fifteen.
“I had friends who were in drugs,” Sarah said, “so I asked if I could join a chemical dependency movement.” She became the patron of the Chemical Dependency Centre. “People tend to be very judgmental about drug users,” she said. “But I see drug addicts as my equals.” At the time, she, too, was a drug addict. “She had given her body over to these slimming drugs [amphetamines], and that was the beginning of her downfall,” said seventy-nine-year-old Jack Temple, one of the many healers she turned to for help. “Slimming drugs fogged her brain. Her actions weren’t normal.”
From New York her American adviser watched in dismay as the Duchess was increasingly portrayed in the press as someone who advanced on the world with both hands extended like horseshoe magnets. “A hand full of gimme and a pocket full of much obliged,” is how one man described Fergie. She sold an exclusive interview to a British newspaper for $201,600. The newspaper complained that she had not been forthcoming and withheld part of her payment because she had denied that she was pregnant. The day the article was published, she admitted to a television interviewer that she was expecting her second child. “I forgot,” she told the newspaper, insisting on full payment. She threatened to sue, but the Queen intervened, and Sarah backed down.
Sarah collected $500,000 for opening the doors of her home, Sunninghill Park, to Hello!, a large glossy picture magazine that caters to celebrities, especially royalty. The magazine, which pays huge fees for exclusives, was Sarah’s favorite; over the next ten years she was featured on several covers. She sold exclusive interviews, plus photographs of herself, her husband, her children, her mother, her father, and her sister. In her debut issue she posed with her husband while they changed their babies’ diapers. The magazine spread seventy photographs over forty-eight pages of the Yorks holding their two daughters, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. And the cover boasted “The Duke and Duchess of York Grant Us the Most Personal of Interviews and for the First Time Ever Throw Open the Doors of Their Home and Invite Us to Share Their Intimate Family Moments.” The Queen said it looked like a movie magazine launch for a Hollywood starlet. Even the novelist Barbara Cartland, whom Mrs. Thatcher’s government had made a Dame of the British empire, expressed disgust. “We might as well have pictures of the Queen Mother taking her clothes off and climbing into the bath.”
The Duchess’s New York adviser had her hands full: “The newspaper stories about Sarah became so horrendous that I finally told her to stop giving interviews because her spontaneous comments were killing her. She would say something light and humorous that was invariably misinterpreted or came out sounding brash and stupid. So her secretary began telling reporters to submit their questions in writing. Sarah would fax the questions to me with what she’d like to say; I’d edit her comments and fax back what she should say. That worked for a while….”
The New York businesswoman tried to protect the Duchess from the press, but the Duchess’s worst enemy was the Duchess herself. She didn’t follow her friend’s advice or learn from her own mistakes. Instead she bemoaned her public image and blamed everyone around her—the courtiers, the press, the Princess of Wales (“I know she leaks stories about me,” Sarah said), her father, and even her husband, whom she now described to friends as “boring… a darling, but a boring darling.” She complained that Andrew did not make enough money to maintain a royal lifestyle. Enthralled by the big-spending ways of her new American friends, especially Croesus-like Texans, she set out to augment her income.
During her first pregnancy, she decided to write a children’s book, although she admitted that her best subject in school had been modern dance. Her headmistress at Hurst Lodge once described her in a school report as “an enthusiastic pupil who makes a cheerful contribution to life at the Lodge… [but]… consistently fails to do herself justice in written work.”
Undaunted, Sarah said she didn’t want to sound like a writer who swallowed the dictionary. So she put her name to a simple story about a helicopter called “Budgie” (slang for the budgerigar parrot) that is looked down upon by the bigger aircraft, until he does something heroic. “I sat down at the dining room table with a big pile of scrap paper, the backs of photocopied stuff and printouts,” the Duchess told Publishers Weekly, “and started writing with just one pencil.”
With that one pencil she made a fortune. She received a $1 million advance from Simon & Schuster, and within three years she had produced four Budgie books; they earned more than $2.5 million from serial rights, foreign rights, and paperback rights. Later, with the help of her financial adviser, she sold merchandising rights, including rights to cartoons, wind-up dolls, T-shirts, hats, and lunch pails. The books became best-sellers in England, despite literary critics who dismissed them as “bland and ghastly” and “utter rubbish.”
Sarah was so severely criticized for marketing her royal title that Robert Fellowes sternly suggested she consider donating at least 10 percent of her royalties to charity. She balked at first, saying Budgie was her only source of significant income. But she backed down as soon as she realized that the “suggestion” had come from Her Majesty. Sarah knew those royal demands usually came through the thin lips of Robert Fellowes. When she was accused of plagiarism,* she announced that she would donate† “a certain percentage.” But, after making the public announcement, she reconsidered and kept the royalties. Then her Budgie books hit severe turbulence.
An observant reader was struck by several similarities between Budgie—The Little Helicopter by HRH the Duchess of York and Hector the Helicopter by Arthur W. Baldwin, an Englishman who had died several years before.
Both books centered on the adventures of a little helicopter with eyelashes; both were similarly illustrated, and both told essentially the same story:
The adventures of Baldwin’s Hector begin with the helicopter feeling “unwanted and forgotten” because he’s left twiddling his thumbs in the hangar while all the other planes are traveling to exotic places. Budgie, too, feels dejected and twiddles his thumbs because all the planes in his hangar are going to an air show.
Hector falls asleep and has a “wonderful dream.” So does Budgie. Upon waking, Hector goes for a spin. So does Budgie. Hector cheers up. “In the distance he could see the sea s
hining and sparkling in the morning sunlight.” Budgie also “cheered up. The sea was sparkling and the cold wind whipped his cheeks.” Both Hector and Budgie perform rescue missions that save people’s lives; both little whirlybirds earn the respect of the big airplanes; and both live happily ever after.
The Duchess maintained that Budgie was her own creation—and she wouldn’t budge: “The books are all me. Every page.” The publisher holding the copyright for Hector was dubious but did not publicly dispute the Duchess. “It is difficult for us to say that anything has been literally ‘copied,’ ” wrote Jane Moore, group legal adviser of Reed International Books in a letter, “but if this was not a major source of inspiration for the ‘Budgie’ books then it is a remarkable coincidence.” She did not say whether she thought the coincidence was accidental or significant.
During Sarah’s second pregnancy in November 1989, she flew to Texas as the guest of honor of Lynn and Oscar Wyatt. The Wyatts’ estimated wealth of $8 billion paid for a gold-plated life of private planes and French villas. Lynn, the Sakowitz department store heiress, was Oscar’s fourth wife. Oscar, an oil tycoon, owned Coastal Corporation. Like little kids who collected Barbie and Ken dolls, the Wyatts collected celebrities—movie stars, models, artists, designers, and royals. “Grace and Rainier are our neighbors in the South of France,” drawled Lynn Wyatt, making the Prince and Princess of Monaco sound like “just folks” on the nearby ranch. A petite blond beauty on the international best-dressed list, Lynn Wyatt thrived on socializing with the likes of Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Liza Minnelli, Nancy Reagan, Princess Margaret, and the Aga Khan.
“The Wyatts are walking wallets,” Fergie told a friend, describing the international socialites and their free-spending style. She breathlessly recited the lavish details of the Monte Carlo Sporting Club Ball that Lynn Wyatt had decorated. “She flew in four thousand yellow roses,” said Fergie, snapping her fingers, “and she didn’t blink.”
As the patron of the Houston Grand Opera, Lynn Wyatt had invited the Duchess to represent the royal family at a benefit salute to the British opera. She gave a dinner party in Sarah’s honor and included her own two sons from her first marriage. Mrs. Wyatt seated her older son, thirty-six-year-old Steve, next to Sarah. He lived in London and worked in his stepfather’s petroleum empire, dealing with sales to the Middle East. He flew from London to Houston solely to attend his mother’s party for the Duchess of York.
Fergie fell hard for the tall, lanky Texan, who had thick dark hair, a year-round tan, and rippling muscles. He described himself as spiritual and attributed his spirituality to Madame Vasso, who later claimed that Sarah and Steve started their affair when Sarah was five months pregnant. The Madame offered this account to an editor at Little, Brown in New York in hopes of selling a book in 1996. But the editor turned down the book proposal, saying people were not interested in the Duchess’s indiscretions.
Sarah, who regularly consulted astrologers, told one that she could not resist the Texan. She described him as “incredibly delicious… like a blue-eyed pudding.” She also told her father that “Fred,” her code name for Wyatt, was wild in bed. At first Major Ferguson objected to their relationship and told her to stop.
“Do you really feel that strongly?” she asked.
“Yes, I do,” said the Major. “Stop. Now.”
“You surely can’t expect me to stay in on my own night after night,” she retorted. She didn’t speak to her father for six months.
“Other people advised Sarah to stop seeing Steve Wyatt,” admitted Major Ferguson, “and they weren’t spoken to for months, either.”
Steve Wyatt had been adopted by his mother’s second husband after his natural father, Robert Lipman, was convicted of killing a woman during a drug overdose and served six years in prison for manslaughter. Steve idolized his freewheeling stepfather, Oscar Wyatt, and rarely referred to his natural father. If asked about him, Steve implied that Lipman had died before he was born. From his mother, Steve had learned the basics of moving in high society; he flattered rich wives and deferred to their rich husbands.
Steve and Sarah spoke the same New Age language of mystics and channelers and crystals full of electromagnetic fields that they fancied as healing and restorative. She told him about the voices she heard in her head and the spirits that protected her from harm. He told her he slept with one of Madame Vasso’s pyramid shields over his bed to protect his psyche. He meditated every morning and ate a macrobiotic diet. “He bored everyone to tears by talking about diets and good karma and the rest of the bullshit modern Americans pollute us with,” said the columnist Taki.
Wyatt despised cigarettes, so Sarah tried not to smoke in front of him. A physical fitness enthusiast, he said, “Mah body is mah temple.” The Duchess said she’d like to start worshiping. Both laughed heartily.
The day after the dinner party, Oscar Wyatt proposed an aerial view of his 29,000-acre ranch near Corpus Christi; he flew Sarah in his private helicopter and allowed her to take over the controls. Steve marveled at her flying skill. “Did your husband teach you how to do that?” he asked.
“My husband doesn’t have much time to teach me anything,” she said.
“What a waste,” said Wyatt. He was entranced with the Queen’s daughter-in-law and let her know.
Sarah had given him her private phone number at the Palace and told him to call her when he returned to London. When he did, she immediately invited him over for drinks. He reciprocated with parties, restaurant dinners, and holidays. She visited him in his apartment in Cadogan Square. Weeks later she introduced him to her unsuspecting husband, and when Andrew returned to sea, she brought Wyatt into their Berkshire home. She invited him to their housewarming party, to their daughter’s christening, and to dinner with her in-laws. She even gave him a place of honor next to the Queen.
Shortly after Andrew returned to his ship in January 1990, Sarah called him, saying she felt despondent. She asked how they could continue a marriage that was subjected to month-long separations. Andrew reminded her of what he had said before they married: he was a prince and a naval officer before he was a husband. He suggested she was feeling overwhelmed because of her pregnancy, but she insisted she wanted to escape from their marriage and the Palace courtiers. “I want to live in Argentina with my mother,” she wailed. Their conversation was tape-recorded by a stranger, who had eavesdropped on his scanner, and sold the tape to a British newspaper.
Andrew rushed home for the March 23, 1990, birth of his second daughter and stayed six weeks. While he and the nanny took care of the new baby, Steve Wyatt flew Sarah and two-year-old Beatrice in a private plane to Morocco for a holiday. The next month Wyatt flew Sarah to the South of France, where his mother had rented a villa. Weeks later, in August 1990, he asked her to entertain Dr. Ramzi Salman, Iraq’s oil minister, at Buckingham Palace. Sarah did not hesitate.
She invited her lover and his Iraqi business acquaintance to dinner in her second-floor suite at the Palace. Naively she did not consider the political ramifications of entertaining the representative of Saddam Hussein days after Iraq had invaded Kuwait. When Prince Philip found out what she had done, he sailed into her for poor judgment. For a member of the British royal family to publicly embrace Iraq when British soldiers might be going to war against the country was “unconscionable” and “just bloody stupid.” Sarah blamed the courtiers. She said, “Someone should have told me.”
After dinner that evening, she had taken her two guests to Le Gavroche, one of London’s finest French restaurants, to join a small party hosted by Alistair McAlpine, former treasurer of the Tory Party. Lord and Lady McAlpine were friends of the Yorks and had dined at Sunninghill Park; they were fond of Sarah but were uncomfortable having to extend hospitality to Saddam Hussein’s envoy. They were also disquieted by Sarah’s blatant behavior with Steve Wyatt. “It was a display of mutual fondling I have never seen before in a three-star restaurant,” said one of the McAlpines’ guests.
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nbsp; “There is in the Duchess a free spirit,” Alistair McAlpine wrote later, “an instinct she believes justifies whatever she may do, regardless of how ridiculous or unsuitable her actions are.”
Surprisingly, Sarah, a master of what Punch magazine called “snoblesse oblige,” did not comprehend the social liability of taking an American lover, especially one who sounded like Sammy Glick with a southern accent. It was a cultural clash of aristocrats versus armadillos on an island that defers to aristocrats. Despite his father’s money, the Texan could not lasso a position within the British establishment. The social barriers were too high, even for an expert climber like Steve Wyatt. One American who had tried to scale the wall ended up living in exile—and she had married the King of England. “The attitude of most British people,” said Harold Brooks-Baker, “is that Americans are savages.”
By 1990 everyone knew that Sarah’s marriage was over, except her husband. Her lover, who continued sleeping with other women, still reveled in her royal invitations. “For the Jewish boy from Houston, whose parentage was shrouded in scandal,” wrote the Daily Mail, “there could have been no greater social triumph than his invitation from the Duchess of York personally to the December 1990 Buckingham Palace Ball to celebrate the birthdays of the Queen Mother (90), Princess Margaret (60), Princess Anne (40) and the Duke of York (30).”
Soon he had no more royal invitations. Through her equerries the Queen communicated her displeasure about the relationship and forced the Duchess to stop seeing the high-flying Texan. “There’ll be nipples on a bull ’fore I’ll embarrass that little lady,” Oscar Wyatt told a business associate. Rather than offend Her Majesty, he cooperated with the Palace by having his son transferred to the United States. “It’s very embarrassing,” Lynn Wyatt told a gossip columnist. “Prince Andrew even called Steve to tell him how sorry he was about it all.”