By Kim Chisnall

From fairytale princess to tabloid fodder, where did it all go so wrong?

Her fall from favour began when she was still technically married to Prince Andrew - she was pictured on a yacht having her toes sucked by her then financial adviser Johnny Bryant. At the time the Queen’s private secretary summed her up as “vulgar, vulgar, vulgar”. Sometimes repetition is all that’s needed.  

Even though the marriage ended, Ferguson held on to her duchess title – and traded on it. She used her name to sell children’s books and became a spokesperson for Weight Watchers. For a time she successfully clawed her way out of debt, but last year she admitted that due to the collapse of her lifestyle company she was back in the red and owed more than $1.3 million.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Ferguson has tiptoed right into her biggest scandal yet. She struck a deal with a man she believed was a wealthy investor – in exchange for just over $1 million dollars she would get him access to her ex-husband who now acts as a trade ambassador for Britain.

She told him: “Look after me and he’ll look after you…you’ll get it back tenfold. I can open any door you want”. He hands over a deposit of $59,000 and Fergie is filmed sitting in front of a huge pile of cash and rubbing her eyes in disbelief.

It must have all seemed too good to be true, and it was. There was no wealthy businessman – just a tabloid newspaper reporter and a hidden camera.

The duchess was stung by The News of the World undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood. Also known as the “fake sheikh” because many of his stings involve him posing as an Arab Sheikh, Mahmood specializes in catching out sports stars, celebrities and of course royalty.

Look closely at the video of Fergusson; you never see Mahmood’s face, just an anonymous back. He’s said to have a clause in his contract preventing the News of the World ever publishing his photo, after all he can’t very well go on catching out the rich and the famous if everyone knows what he looks like?

This is ethically dubious journalism and some may see it as entrapment, but I still can’t feel sorry for the duchess.

Sure she might be broke (or as she put it to the reporter: “I absolutely have not a pot to p**s in”), but there are many less ugly ways to make a dollar. Maybe she could get a job for instance?

She’s described the incident as a “serious lapse in judgment” but even that’s an understatement, she was just plain stupid. Not once did she ask the reporter for identification and despite attempts by her staff to get the reporter to sign a confidentiality agreement (which would have put an end to any tabloid story), when he refused she ploughed on regardless – blinded by the dollar signs.

Toe sucking is one thing, flogging off your ex-husband without his knowledge - quite another.