The royals - Kitty Kelley [193]
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