DISGRACED British royal Sarah Ferguson turned up on Oprah Winfrey's top rated daytime talk show yesterday to tout her new book with its bare foot cover and to blast the British press she said tried to "behead" her.
The Duchess of York, still wearing her wedding ring even after her recent divorce from Queen Elizabeth's second son Prince Andrew, confessed to committing transgressions while in the royal fold and in mistakenly believing her own press clippings.
"I cringe in embarrassment, I die," she said, reacting to the details of her affair with her former business manager, the Texan, Mr John Bryan.
The affair, which came shortly after her 1992 separation from Prince Andrew, was captured in infamous tabloid photographs showing a topless duchess and Mr Bryan appearing to suck her bare toes. In her just published autobiography, My Story, the duchess said the scene was not as titillating as it looked and that Mr Bryan was playing a game of Cinderella.
The book's cover, which shows the duchess seated with her bare foot and its dark painted toenails, was not meant to recall the tabloid story and was merely an idea of the photographer's, she insisted.
But she admitted that now she realises the affair was a mistake. "I'd really done a good job of sabotage. The coconut of all coconuts."
In her book, the duchess said she was set up by bureaucrats in the royal retinue, "The Firm," who set out to disgrace her.
"They, through the British media, have tried to behead us," she said about herself and her sister in law, the Princess of Wales who this year was divorced from Prince Charles, heir to the throne. The two women would just not follow orders and play by the palace rules, and they paid for it, she explained.
"I'm afraid that for Diana and I, we're like rivers. We want to learn more. We want to go around the next corner. We're hungry for life," she told Winfrey during the show, which was taped on Tuesday.
"The British press at the moment is completely and utterly cruel and abusive and so invasive, but I haven't said anything up to now. I haven't. I decided to speak through my book," she said.
Later yesterday, the duchess travelled to New York City, where she autographed copies of her book at a shop on Fifth Avenue.
Although the duchess spoke on the talk show about her continuing love and friendship for Prince Andrew, she said they were unlikely to reunite. She also recounted her misplaced notion that she was merely marrying "my man" when they wed.
"People say, `Aren't you stupid. Why didn't you know all this?' But if you're not told, and you're not aware of your own person, and you've lost your identity, and you believe the press".
"At 26 years old I really believed I was this breath of fresh air in Buckingham Palace, this `Fergie'," she said.