‘Homeless’ Sarah Ferguson faces fresh questions as she ‘hides out in luxury hotels’
Sarah Ferguson hasn’t been seen in public for months, with reports that she has travelled around Europe and stayed at an exclusive wellness retreat
Sarah’s whereabouts have been largely kept under wraps(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Sarah Ferguson has finally been spotted – and it’s led to even more questions.
Since being evicted from Royal Lodge, Sarah, 66, has been lying low – having gone into hiding after her connections to Jeffrey Epstein emerged. The ex-duchess has not been seen in public in months; she made a brief appearance at her granddaughter Athena’s Christening at St James’s Palace on December 12 – but were no images from the ceremony.
It has since been claimed that she spent a significant amount of time hiding out at one of the world’s most expensive wellness clinics – the £13,000-a-day Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, where she holed up from shortly after Christmas until the end of January. A Swiss source recently told the Mail: “She always feels at home at Paracelsus, and knows she’ll get love and attention there, as well as expert health treatment when she’s feeling at her most vulnerable.”
Sarah hasn’t been seen in public in months(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
From there, Sarah is said to have spent time in the French Alps before moving on to the United Arab Emirates – where she reportedly reunited with her youngest daughter Eugenie, who was in Doha attending an art fair as part of her job with art dealer Hauser and Wirth.
She was then rumoured to have travelled to Switzerland to join Eugenie’s half-term ski holiday in Gstaad, while the latest reports placed her at the Ballyliffin Lodge & Spa in Donegal, Ireland, where prices start from around £110–£115 a night. It’s not the first time she has visited the spa: when she was there in 2024 she posted a TikTok filmed on a nearby beach in which she said: ‘I find things get sometimes overwhelming, I just try and take myself off to the most beautiful, wonderful blast of fresh air.’
These crisis getaways have all led to one pressing question – how is Sarah affording it? Her income appears to have dried up in the wake of the Epstein scandal, with charities cutting ties and her latest children’s book withdrawn from sale. But, as she has shown in the past, the ex-duchess always seems to somehow land on her feet.
Her love of ‘reckless’ spending in the past led to her being in excessive debt for years, and while she has been able to claw herself back financially in the past – from starring in Weight Watchers ads and flogging products on QVC, to appearing on Loose Women and even writing saucy novels – she is now a social pariah whose friends and former acquaintances have fallen by the wayside.
The disgraced ex-Duchess spent weeks at the £13,000-a-day Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich, according to reports(Image: AP)
Fergie has previously not been adverse to asking people for money; she is said to have been bailed out by the late Queen in the past when the bank Coutts “demanded £500,000 within 14 days” . And the tranche of Epstein files seem to reveal desperate pleas for cash from the convicted sex offender.
Sarah had previously admitted she borrowed £15,000 from Epstein to settle her debts, but newly-surfaced emails allegedly show that she also asked for further sums: $50,000 (£37,240) to $100,000 (£78,475) from him to help with “small bills” and that she asked to visit his private island in the Caribbean.
And in 2009, after the crash of a business venture, Sarah appears to write to Epstein: “I urgently need 20,000 pounds ($27,521) for rent today. The landlord has threatened to go to the newspapers if I don’t pay. Any brainwaves?” Reports suggest Epstein may have “bankrolled” her for 15 years, with some estimates putting the total amount at up to £2 million.
In another humiliating exchange, she even begs the former financier for a job. “But why, I don’t understand, don’t you just get me to be your House Assistant. I am the most capable and desperately need the money,” Sarah wrote in the email, dated May 2010, adding, “Please Jeffrey think about it.”
The message was sent after Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in June 2008, but was let out five months early on July 22, 2009. Under the terms of his release Epstein was required to register as a sex offender.
Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls(Image: US Department of Justice/AFP via)
Less than a week later, while he was on house arrest, Fergie travelled to his home with her girls in tow. In another message from January 2010, Sarah fawned over Epstein, writing: “You are a legend. I really don’t have the words to describe my love, gratitude for your generosity and kindness. Xx I am at your service. Just marry me.”
In further correspondence, she thanked Jeffrey “for being the brother I have always wished for”, and also made a crude reference to her own daughter’s sex life.
Sarah’s love of spending was documented in detail in Andrew Lownie’s biography, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. Lownie, who spent four years researching Sarah and Andrew for his book, claims the ex duchess spent wildly during her marriage, splurging on staff, holidays, parties and flowers, in what he has described as a life of “opulent excess”. Worst of all, he claims no thought was given as to how bills would be settled.
Lownie detailed excesses such as £65,000 to have a personal trainer on permanent standby – despite using their services just twice in a year. Fergie also allegedly ran up a bill of £51,000 at the luxury department store Selfridges, where she would make purchases through the firm’s personal shopper and her old school pal, Pandora Delevigne. Sarah also once spent £14,000 in a month at a London wine merchant, according to the book.
Sarah racked up huge debt as a result of her lavish spending(Image: Julian Finney, Getty Images)
But Fergie’s apparent lavish spending caught up with her. After a bill of £500 went unpaid, a newsagent reportedly refused to supply the then-duchess, while a local butcher, dry cleaning company, and car hire firm are also listed among her creditors. Even the BP card used at petrol stations was allegedly confiscated due to unpaid arrears.
A former staff member told Lownie that “greed and wastefulness that contributed to the duchess’s financial downfall”, claiming: “Every night she demands a whole side of beef, a leg of lamb and a chicken, which are laid out on the dining room table like a medieval banquet. It’s a feast that would make Henry VIII proud.
“But often there is just her and her girls, Bea and Eugenie, and most of it is wasted. There is no attempt to keep it to have cold the next day. It just sits there all night, and the next day it’s thrown away.”
Lownie also claims Fergie “would regularly miss flights that were not refundable”, totting up thousands of pounds in unnecessary costs. One source also revealed that Fergie “thought nothing of arriving at an airport with 25 cases and paying between £800 and £4,000 in excess baggage. At least five of those cases were packed with toiletries and make-up. Another would be used solely for clothes hangers.”
Meanwhile, “personal trainers, hairdressers and Pilates instructors were paid hundreds of pounds an hour to wait for her to emerge for the day in the late afternoon. Her butler had to get in at 4.30am to put watercress on ice”.
Sarah with her daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie(Image: Getty Images Europe)
Despite the latest blows to her reputation, Fergie is said to be plotting a ‘comeback’ of sorts. It’s claimed that the disgraced ex duchess is now scouting around for a new PR team as she plots her return – without Andrew – with the hopes of continuing to live in the Windsor area. Sources say she has told friends: “I need to get back to work. I need money.”
But it’s going to be incredibly difficult for Sarah to rebuild the life she once had, according to royal correspondent Jennie Bond. “If it is true that she still thinks she can make some sort of comeback, she is more deluded than I thought possible,” she told the Mirror.
“Her charities have deserted her, her publishers have pulped her latest book, and almost every day brings more revelations about her fawning and prolonged friendship with the convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.
“Ferguson has made some spectacular comebacks before, and has even managed to get herself back into the family fold for royal social gatherings, such as Christmas at Sandringham. But to think she could come back from this latest disgrace – with her emails calling Epstein a legend and a supreme friend, even …perhaps jokingly…asking him to marry her, suggests she is away with the fairies.”
Beatrice and Eugenie have been keeping a low-profile following the release of the Epstein files(Image: Getty Images)
It follows reports that the sisters have been told they cannot join the Royal Family at Ascot this year following the fallout around their parents’ connections with Epstein. Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie , 35, have reportedly been left “completely blindsided” by the apparent decision to not have them in the Royal Box at the famous races in June.
Although Andrew and Sarah had their royal titles stripped by King Charles last year, the sisters held onto their princess titles amid the fallout. Despite this, the Queen’s granddaughters are allegedly starting to be slowly iced out of public-facing royal events and occasions.
A source told the Daily Mail: “I’ve spoken to my friend who works at Ascot and they said the girls have been told they can’t be there this year. Beatrice has taken it the hardest. She’s been completely blindsided by all of this.”
