Listen up, please, for the Duchess of York has something sad to share. Again. She is, she has declared, “the most persecuted woman in the history of the royal family”, and who could possibly argue with that? As Anne Boleyn surely would have said if she still had a head: “Sheesh, and I thought being decapitated at the Tower of London on dodgy charges of adultery was bad. Now I can see this is nothing compared with being caught by the Daily Mirror having your toes sucked on a sunlounger by a Texan millionaire who is not your husband. I feel pretty stupid now and can only thank Fergie for a much-needed lesson in perspective.”
Word from the underworld has it that Mary, Queen of Scots is whingeing that her botched execution during which the axeman missed her neck first time, landing on her head and taking a couple more blows to hack through the neck sinews, was fractionally worse than Sarah Ferguson being caught on camera half-drunk demanding £500,000 from a fake businessman to get him access to Prince Andrew. But that’s typical Queen Mary — always “me, me, me”. What did she know about feeling at a low ebb, eh? Mary, were you ever in such debt that you had to get a sex offender by the name of Jeffrey Epstein to give you £15,000 to pay your bills like the afflicted duchess? No, I thought not, so do button your lip. Oh, sorry, you can’t.
You would never see the poor, beleaguered Fergie showing such a spectacular lack of self-awareness. Crassness is not how she rolls. I mean, yes, there was that potentially icky moment this summer when she compared herself to Nelson Mandela and the nation’s toes collectively curled like a pig’s tail. Sarah posited that her “exile” from the royal family after her divorce from Andrew echoed Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment, and I’m sure we can all see the obvious similarities. “One day I got up and thought, ‘Mandela forgave his persecutors; surely I can forgive and move forward,’ ” she said. Quite. Two titans of history just deciding to let it go.
But forgive what exactly, Sarah? Ah, I see. The media calling her the “Duchess of Pork”. It’s practically the same, Nelson, if you think about it. Queen Catherine Howard, executed possibly as young as 17, has just tweeted. “That’s terrible, babes :( Thank god we never had to put up with crap like that in my day. #solidarity.”
It was in an interview with the French magazine Madame Figaro that the duchess suggested that she was the most persecuted woman in royal history. Don’t worry, I’m sure the French have forgotten all about Princess Diana by now. And they will definitely think that Fergie had it rougher than Marie Antoinette did at the end. Did Marie have to pay back an overdraft of £4 million with Coutts? Did she? “The bruised reed that doesn’t break is in my DNA,” Fergie added. Nope, me neither. In 2019 she told Vogue that Prince Andrew was “the best man I know”. Blimey, that’s a bit of a low bar. If you are a male friend of Sarah, then sympathies. That’s quite a blow to the ego.
Advertisement
Look, it’s the season of goodwill, and all the most persecuted woman in royal history wants for Christmas is a break. But sadly it won’t be at the Yorks’ £17 million ski chalet in the Swiss resort of Verbier this year because they fell behind with the payments. Will their trials never end?
Triggered by the 1970s
Britbox has prefaced its 1975 Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em Christmas special with a warning that it “contains language and attitudes of the time that may offend”. It comes after a viewer complained that when Frank Spencer dresses up as a pixie a child calls him a homophobic slur beginning with “p”. Britbox is also rerunning 1970s episodes of Are You Being Served?, which took innuendo to maestro level.
Does Britbox know what fire it is playing with? With stereotypically camp Mr “I’m Free!” Humphries enjoying measuring gentlemen’s inside legs and Mrs Slocombe boring on about her damp pussy, I sense trouble ahead. Although one of Mrs Slocombe’s funniest lines contained no mention of her cat at all. Objecting to being pointed at, she said: “Captain Peacock, I do not respond to any man’s finger.” Bravo. Mary Whitehouse must have been incandescent with impotent rage.
Fins ain’t what they used to be
Are you a “mervert”? If so, do talk me through it because I’m baffled. A professional mermaid (yes, it’s a thing) called Felicia Flaherty complains that a certain type of “mervert” gets leerily overexcited around half-fish women in their flipper costumes, perhaps imagining that, like Ariel, they want a human male with whom to mate. But how, guys, how?
Are you thinking of Daryl Hannah in Splash whose tail turned into legs when dry? Why not save time and go directly for a woman on a bar stool in jeans? Because you do know mermaids aren’t real, right? “It is unsafe for a mermaid to perform without a trusted individual looking out for them for that reason,” Flaherty said.
Advertisement
But why would a monofin be erotic anyway? Surely a woman with her legs melded together has the opposite effect. I know they also wear bikini tops, but you can see that on any beach. Hard to imagine men rubbing their thighs over a half-cow or half-penguin. Besides, you know what mermaids always say when you suggest an early night? “Not tonight, dear, I have a haddock.”
