Duchess of Debt: Sarah Ferguson spent ‘£3,000 on a champagne occasion for builders’ and blew £25,000 in an hour at Bloomingdale’s. With such obscene spending it is no marvel she wanted bailouts from Epstein

After weeks of speculation about Sarah Ferguson’s whereabouts, it was today revealed that the former Duchess of York is licking her wounds in the UAE as revelations about her ties to Jeffrey Epstein continue to plague her reputation. 

Fergie, 66, is allegedly telling anyone who will listen that ‘I need money’ after work dried up in the wake of the scandal surrounding her years-long friendship with the late paedophile.

She is looking for a bailout after years of relying on the convicted sex offender for money, after the Mail on Sunday revealed that Epstein was bankrolling Fergie for over a decade.

However, her insatiable appetite for a life of luxury meant disgraced Andrew’s ex-wife was always coming up short as she spent millions of pounds on holidays, pricey home renovations, staff wages, designer clothes, and security arrangements. 

Historian Andrew Lownie has laid bare the extent of Fergie’s reckless spending, while also suggesting convicted sex offender Epstein may have paid Sarah up to £2million over the years, in his landmark biography Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York. 

While Sarah has already admitted she received £15,000 from Epstein as she apologised for the ‘gigantic error of judgement’ in an interview with the London Evening Standard in 2011, Mr Lownie estimates the actual sum is far higher. 

‘A mutual friend of Andrew and Epstein has claimed, “I think that Sarah has actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ from Epstein”,’ Mr Lownie wrote in the book, adding: ‘Ferguson denies this.’ 

What is undeniable, however, is that Fergie was always spending far beyond her means, often indulging herself in ways that were not only wasteful but appalling, the royal author noted. 

By 1995, Fergie and Andrew’s marriage was over as reports about her mounting debt began appearing more and more frequently in the press. 

At the beginning of the year, Fergie was ‘forced’ out of her home at Romenda Lodge because the owner decided to sell the mansion on Wentworth Estate and increase the rent.

She moved into Kingsbourne on the same Surrey estate and reportedly threw a ‘£3,000 champagne party’ for the 150 builders and removal men that helped transport her belongings, Mr Lownie revealed.   

A few months after she relocated to the eight-bedroom property, Fergie opened the mansion up to Hello! magazine for a cover story that featured photographs of the impressive home. 

It was accompanied by Fergie’s claim that she was ‘in such financial straits she would have to concentrate on earning money rather than her charity work’. 

The contrast between the glossy photos of Fergie’s new home and admission of her financial instability was so stark that the spread ‘drew attention to both her extravagant lifestyle and her debts’, Mr Lownie wrote. 

It was revealed that Fergie was paying a £6,000 monthly rent for Kingsbourne, equipped with an all-weather tennis court and outdoor swimming pool, while doling out £32,000 in staff wages and £16,000 on phone bills. 

‘The duchess continued to live beyond her means,’ Mr Lownie wrote, ’employing a staff of 17 that included a cook, driver, maid, butler, dresser, nanny, three secretaries, a personal assistant, lady-in-waiting, accountant and accountant’s assistant, two gardeners, a flower arranger, and dog walker.’ 

At one point, Sarah’s staff included a helper to ‘pick up the dog s***’ as well as another person to ‘help him’. 

The royal biographer said that Sarah spent an astonishing ‘£25,000 on frocks, shoes and handbags by Danish designer Isabell Kristensen’ in one week, adding: ‘It was said she spent £14,000 in one month with a particular London wine merchant.’ 

When she lived with Andrew at Sunninghill Park in 1990, the ex-couple – since stripped of their royal titles – were said to have spent £300-a-week on vegetables at Waitrose, while their freezer was also filled with numerous ice creams that were hardly touched.

Even the former couple’s Jack Russel, Bendicks, enjoyed a life of utter luxury – with one friend recalling how staff were made to cook the dog ‘proper dinners, liver or sausages with gravy’.

And while Andrew became increasingly concerned about the rising costs of their energy bills, Fergie was said to have ‘defiantly’ turned the lights and heating back on, according to royal author Andrew Lownie.

Mr Lownie also recounted how in the summer of 1994, Fergie rented the lavish villa Domaine La Fontaine near Cannes in the South of France at an eye-watering cost of £20,000.

Despite the villa being self-catering, the former Duchess was joined by a butler, two housekeepers, a personal dresser, general assistant, a nanny and sherpa friend Yeltsin.

Young princesses Beatrice and Eugenie were also present, along with two Scotland Yard protection officers, Mr Lownie said. 

Never one to be frugal, a truck was driven from England to provide sun loungers and swimming pool toys for the children, while an additional five telephone lines were installed in the property.

‘There was a daily delivery of wine, including Laurent-Perrier rose champagne and her favourite Puligny-Montrachet at £50 a bottle, often opened and then not drunk,’ added Mr Lownie.

The ex-Duchess was also said to have partied with the likes of Pamela Stephenson and musician Billy Connolly, alongside Sir David Frost, Roger Moore and pop star Belinda Carlisle at a cost of over £100,000.

In 1996, Fergie’s former lover and financial adviser, John Bryan, himself told the now-defunct News of the World paper how Fergie’s annual expenditure totalled an astronomical £860,000 (around £1.7million today) in an exclusive interview. 

Mr Bryan said £300,000 of this was spent on staff, £150,000 on gifts, £50,000 on flowers, £50,000 on parties, and £150,000 on travel. 

All the while, Fergie ‘remained in denial about her debt’, according to Mr Lownie. 

He revealed a friend of the former Duchess told him: ‘I have heard her throw an absolute screaming fit when one of her staff showed her a letter from the bank. She just doesn’t want to know.” 

‘The tantrums kept staff turnover high. 

‘”Car journeys are the worst,” said one aide. “She will sit on the phone screaming at employees and reduce everyone to wrecks. Then she will wonder why we are so unhappy.”‘ 

By November 1995, however, even Fergie had no choice but to admit ‘her debts exceeded $5million’, wrote Mr Lownie, and her creditors were closing in. 

Mr Lownie said Fergie’s friend Lila Mahtani threatened to sue her if she did not return the £100,000 spent on her holiday in the South of France. 

Fergie allegedly only returned £5,000 of Ms Mahtani’s loan because she ‘had understood the rest to be a gift’. 

‘Room Service sent Sarah a solicitor’s letter as the £150 a week for renting furniture at Kingsbourne had not been paid for weeks, and previous letters had been ignored,’ Mr Lownie wrote. 

‘The package over three years had cost the duchess £21,000, more than double what it would have cost to buy the furniture.’ 

She also allegedly had £750 interest accruing each day and even owed her hairdresser £40. 

Her debts had been so widely reported on by this time that The Sun newspaper ‘set up a “Save A Squander” fund for her,’ Mr Lownie reported. 

The coverage also led to Fergie being approached by ‘soft-porn Fantasy channel’ with an offer of £1million to present a weekly show. 

‘The porn magazine Hustler offered her £3million to pose nude.’ 

Ferguson, who is reportedly about to be made ‘homeless’ after being kicked out of Royal Lodge, where she has been living with ex-husband Andrew, has apologised repeatedly for her friendship with Epstein.

However, the latest batch of Epstein files show the paedophile helped pay off around $60,000 worth of debts she owed to a former assistant.

In one email dated 4 April, 2009, and signed ‘Love Sarah, the red head!’ she tells Epstein: ‘I am landing in Palm Beach in a couple of hours. Is there any chance on my quick layover that I can get to have a quick cup of tea?’

She goes on to discuss ‘Mother’s Army’, a website Epstein purchased for her, and says: ‘My dear, spectacular and special friend Jeffrey. You are a legend and I am so proud of you.’

The paedophile was still under house arrest when the email was sent.

In July 2009 financier Glenn Dubin, one of Epstein’s close friends, writes to him saying: ‘Fergie said she would organize tea in the Buckingham Palace apts…or Windsor Castle..she said you should call her directly.’

In another exchange in August 2009 Sarah thanks the billionaire ‘for being the brother I have always wished for’.

In 2010, Epstein is invited to Andrew’s 50th birthday party in an email which says: ‘Dear Jeffrey, Beatrice, Eugenie and I would love to invite you to celebrate the 50 years of Papa/Andrew.’

A source said: ‘Epstein was always falling out with Sarah over money. She would borrow it from him and then say something stupid which would make the papers and infuriate him. He wasn’t that fond of her, she was more of a useful idiot to him. She offered him a way into Andrew’s good graces and, by default, the good graces of the Royals.’

By July 2010 they appear to have patched things up with Epstein saying an unnamed friend will be in London adding ‘any chance of your daughters saying hello?’ to which Sarah replies: ‘Beatrice is in London with her father. Eugie is away with a cool boyfriend.’

But in March 2011 Epstein was ‘enraged’ after Sarah gave an interview to London’s Evening Standard newspaper calling him a paedophile. He even considered suing her.

He hired Michael Sitrick, a high-powered New York crisis manager who wrote: ‘Jeffrey, the Fergie retraction is critical. One of your good friends, a member of the Royal family, is calling you a paedophile.

‘If gentle persuasion doesn’t work it is my view that we need to turn up the heat to the point of sending her a draft defamation lawsuit. As I said yesterday, this would be a major turning point and be picked up everywhere.

‘This is about your name and your reputation. You really can’t worry about her, in my view you need to worry about you. She certainly isn’t concerned about you or your reputation.’

Just weeks after telling the Standard she would ‘never have anything to do with Epstein again’, Sarah wrote him a grovelling letter in April 2011 in which she called him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’.

She said: ‘I know you feel hellaciously let down by me. And I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that. You have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.’

A spokeswoman for the former duchess said she had been left terrified by Epstein’s threats to sue saying: ‘Like many people she was taken in by his lies.

‘As soon as she was aware of the extent of the allegations against him she not only cut off contact but condemned him publicly to the extent that he then threatened to sue her for defamation for associating him with paedophilia.’

The former duchess has previously been contacted for comment by the Daily Mail.