‘Royal Fairy Story Gone Awry’ in L.A.? : 2 Papers Chide Sarah for ‘Brash, Vulgar Behavior’

LONDON — Two British weeklies accused Prince Andrew’s wife, the former Sarah Ferguson, of brash and vulgar behavior during the couple’s recent 10-day visit to California, with one writer taking special aim at her “Carmen Miranda impersonation” gown.

London’s Sunday Times said that after seeing the Duke and Duchess of York, Americans will likely “retreat to their more refined dinner parties, there to cap each other with anecdotes about the awful vulgarities of the British.”

The Observer, a liberal weekly, in a profile of the 28-year-old duchess, commented, “Something appears to have gone awry with the royal fairy story.”

The newspapers were particularly critical of the duchess’ quip, “I’ll see you later,” to a man who yelled out, “I love you.”

Of a black-tie dinner at which the duchess wore a flamboyant red and black gown, sketch writer Craig Brown wrote in the Sunday Times:

“While the stars of Hollywood dressed in discreet black and stayed in the shadows, down the stairs walloped someone who looked as if she’d just won third prize for her Carmen Miranda impersonation in an end-of-pier show at some forgotten resort.”

‘Carnivorous Grin’

Brown added, “Trotting next to her was an over-animated young man with a carnivorous grin who, no matter how many dinner jackets he wore, would still look like a Third Division (soccer player) out for a good time at The Hippodrome.”

Brown recalled that Britons often make fun of U.S. tourists for their clothes or comments on Europe, and said, “Yet still the newspapers maintained that it was royalty which was teaching the Americans a thing or two about class.”

“If (the duchess’) appearance at the rostrum (in the red and black gown) did indeed bring a ‘touch of British class’ to the proceedings, then it was most surely a touch of lower-middle class.”

The Observer asked, “Has the Duchess of York gone too far?” and added, “Even in this day and age it is easily possible for noblesse to be too obliging.”

“The sweet smell of success seems to be being replaced by one of excess,” the Observer continued. “Sarah Ferguson was made a Top Person when she married Prince Andrew, but she wasn’t meant to go over the top; was meant to be in the limelight, not to hog it.

“What do people who come to watch the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace make of the even more strange spectacle of the new guard changing things inside the Palace?”