Sarah Ferguson’s comeback performance this week was a wonder to behold wasn’t it?
There would no doubt have been much PR brainstorming ahead of the hour-long interview. So really, was this the best they could come up with?
The interview recorded for the Oprah Winfrey show aired yesterday on US daytime TV, in which the Duchess of York talked about herself in the third person and broke down in tears, blaming her behaviour on everything from alcohol to grief and near-bankruptcy.
“There aren’t many words to describe such an act of gross stupidity,” she told Winfrey, after being forced to watch the recording of the event in which of course a News of The World reporter, posing as an Indian businessman, agreed to pay her $500,000 in order to gain access to her former husband.
As the tape ran so she started referring to herself in the third person: “Poor love. I feel sorry for her — she looks so exhausted.” It got worse. “You pull away the onion skin, and you’ve sort of merged the dark and the light of Sarah”. And worse still. “I’m a tiny little newborn chick”.
My God.
Not much in the way of acceptance of blame, but rather a “poor Sarah” act to avoid it.
Does she really think the public are going to be stupid enough to accept this rubbish. And more to the point does her PR advisor? Sincerity was really what was need here and yet there was not a shred of it.
We’re not sure even our crisis-handling tips could help her out of this one.
“You on that tape — that is spiritually, morally bankrupted person,” said Winfrey at the end of her interview. Ferguson agreed: “That’s genius”.
You could not make it up.
Gemma Carey, Bluewood Training Ltd www.bluewoodtraining.com