Sarah Ferguson? The Duchess of Pork? What's the toe-sucking redhead up to now?

At the risk of sounding like a page from the Starr report, she was the suckee rather than the sucker. Anyway, her days of phalangial fetishism appear to be behind her, now that she has become a serious chatshow host.

Sorry: this is the same Sarah Ferguson we're talking about here, isn't it? Budgie the helicopter and jokes about anchovies bottoms?

That's the one. She has just begun a season of talk shows on Sky One, the latest in a series of attempted reinventions following her divorce from Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Prince Andrew used to date a former porn star named Koo Stark, but the Royal Family felt that this was a bit of an embarrassment so he married Fergie instead - another case of astute judgment by the Windsors. Sir Robert Bellows, the Queen's Private Secretary, allegedly used to greet Fergie with the morning papers and the words: "Not done very well today, have we, Ma'am?"

So what's this show called?

It's called Sarah . . . Surviving Life, since Sarah has been through so much hardship of her own (Klosters can be very cold in the winter). It's only been on for two weeks, so we have resisted commenting on it so far in order to give it time to evolve.

And has it evolved?

Fossils encased in the Burgess Shale for millions of years have a better chance of evolving. The Daily Mail described the show as "the most embarrassing 60 minutes in chatshow history". Its stated aim is to interview "real people who have been through hell". Viewers of the first two shows are already queueing up to participate.

Oh, come on. It can't have been that bad.

Well, one of her first week's guests was Eileen Drewery, Glenn Hoddle's spiritual guru. "Is Hitler living with God in heaven?" asked Fergie, causing five-year-olds around the country to nod sagely at the perspicacity of the question. Last week, she told a bulimic: "If I invited you for dinner, I'd be better off giving you a glass of water because it would be a waste of time cooking for you."

Good grief. How much is she getting for all this?

It's not entirely clear. A figure of £10,000 per show has been reported, although it seems that Sarah is giving her fee to charity. This will come as something of a shock to her bankers. In 1996, she had reported debts of £4 million and came up with a number of wheezes to pay them off, including a stint as US spokeswoman for Weight-Watchers (for a fee rumoured to be $1 million) and a spell advertising cranberry juice on US television (fee: $500,000).

And what does the future hold for her now?

Well, this week's show deals with women married to older men, last week's was about bulimia and the first show was about alternative forms of spirituality. See a pattern yet?

Blimey, her shows are all about the Royal Family!

Exactly. Expect future shows on what happens when you can't get along with your mother-in-law, men who cheat on their young wives with older women named Camilla and what to do if your mother-in-law's mum is a rummy.