Royal wedding invitations: Fergie sinned but doesn't deserve to be treated like a leper

Add to My Stories Hear ye, hear ye! By the order of Her Majesty the Queen, preparations are underway for the enchantment of a royal wedding.In a secret atelier somewhere, a dress fit for a Princess is being spun from gossamer and crystal. Across Europe, diamonds are being brought out of bank vaults, minks removed from storage, medals and shoes polished until they gleam.The best man and the bridesmaids have been named, and even the toppings for the mini pizzas to be served at the reception have been chosen by the Princess-to-be herself.

Snub: Sarah Ferguson will not be invited to the Royal wedding after the Royal family were 'appalled' by her behaviour. Her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, will both be presentFinally, 1,900 invitations were sent out last week, the gilt-embossed starting gun for the April wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.Yes, its going to be a bit of a do. David and Victoria Beckham are invited. So are David and Samantha Cameron, most of the crowned heads of Europe and lots of posh girls William once dated.Plus, of course, the usual ragbag of royals, quasi-royals and aristocratic hangers-on. For no royal wedding would be complete without Princess Michael of Kent hoovering up the canaps like a prize seal, or Rupert de Hereditary getting sozzled on the royal fizz.Yet there is one name, one sad and lonely name, that has been deliberately left off the royal guest list yet again. Sarah, Duchess of York, has not been invited to the wedding.

No royal wedding would be complete without Princess Michael of Kent hoovering up the canaps like a prize seal, or Rupert de Hereditary getting sozzled on the royal fizz.
Really? Come on! How cruel of the Windsors to exclude her. Yes, Fergie may have her sins to atone for, and some of them are indeed mighty, but hasnt she served enough time in solitary confinement in the royal punishment block?Som! e say Pr ince William was determined to invite the woman who, although deeply flawed, was once such a close friend and confidante of his mother. Yet even he was met with intractable resistance further up the Windsor food chain.To some, the presence of the Duchess at the wedding would be toxic, unthinkable. So without further argument, in some nameless comptrollers office, a pitiless line was drawn through her name. Hapless Sarah was banished to the sidelines once more.Of course, we all know that Sarah Ferguson is her own worst enemy and an ocean-going clot to boot. Yet this continued public humiliation, this ongoing exile from the royal court suggests an ingrained bitterness and a level of deep-frozen hostility towards her that is becoming uncomfortable to witness.And when you consider the laughable calibre of some of the others who have been invited, what did she do that was so bad? Lemon-faced Posh, the unsmiling Spice Girl? Prince Harrys cocktail-chugging mates from Mahiki?This ongoing froideur towards the Duchess does everyone a disservice. It makes the Queen, in whose name the invitations were sent out, look bitter and unforgiving; the matriarch of a colony of cold-hearted and callous snobs.Surely weddings, royal or otherwise, are supposed to be celebratory events; the one big occasion when fractured families should joyously gettogether to bury the hatchet and their differences, to welcome home theblack sheep and the prodigal sons and daughters?Well, not this family. And not this woman.

It seems odd that the mother of the fifth and sixth in line to the throne has not been invited to the wedding, but the David Beckham, who is hardly a saint hasWhat we have discovered this week is that on the rock face of royal life, the Fergie fissure runs deeper than anyone imagined.Yet if David Beckham has been invited to the royal wedding, shouldnt the mother of the Princesses who are fifth and sixth in l! ine to t he throne be asked, too?Beckhams hardly a saint, after all. Despite his denials over the years, the smoke of infidelity continues to lurk in the shadows of his life. And even more insulting to the Duchess of York must be the fact that Kate Middletons rackety, drug-dealing uncle will have pride of place at the wedding while she is vanquished from the scene.Gary Goldsmith is no ones idea of an ideal citizen. The unsavoury younger brother of Carole Middleton has been exposed as a cannabis-smoking drug dealer, a man who offered to arrange call girls and cocaine for visitors to his home, the fruitily titled Casa de Bang Bang on the island of Ibiza. A home, incidentally, where William and Kate once stayed on holiday.Yet tawdry Uncle Gary will be at Westminster Abbey in all his wedding finery, forgiven and welcomed by all as part of Kates immediate and extended family.If clemency is being shown to him, why not to the Duchess of York, who will be reduced to watching the ceremony on television like the rest of us? In contrast to Uncle Gary, Fergie has never done anything criminal. Unless you count her criminal stupidity.

Tawdry: Despite being a cannabis-smoking drug-dealer, Kate's uncle Gary Goldsmith has been forgiven and invited to the weddingSarah Ferguson has been royal persona non grata since 1992, when she was photographed having her toes sucked by her financial adviser, the light-bulb-headed John Bryan.She was topless at the time and it was only seven months after she had separated from Prince Andrew. For this, she was never forgiven. And from the embarrassment of this starting point, the roller-coaster calamity of her life just rolled on and on.At the end of her marriage, it was discovered that she owed Coutts bank nearly 5million. Sarah worked hard to pay off the debt, trading on her royal name in the U.S., advertising diets and jewellery.Yet after some initial success, her New York med! ia firm Hartmoor LLC closed with debts of more than 700,000, a victim of the economic downturn, she claimed. The company had been set up to capitalise on what was believed to be Americas undying affection for the damaged former royal.Then last year, perhaps worst of all, the Duchess was filmed by an undercover Sunday red-top reporter posing as an Indian businessman. She was seen offering access to her former husband, with whom she still lives, for 500,000. Viewers of the secret footage said her eyes bulged like greedy golfballs when she counted the cash.In a cavalcade of mishaps and mortifications over the years, this was her greatest shame. Sarahs worst fault seems to be that she is locked in an abusive relationship with money; she cant seem to get enough of it, and, somehow, it always beats her up in the end.The Windsors are appalled by her behaviour. Yet I cant help but think that if they had looked after the young Sarah Ferguson rather better when her marriage to Prince Andrew first went awry, perhaps she would not have got into so many dreadful pickles afterwards.

In the ongoing saga of the Awfulness of Sarah, they are not without blame. And in giving her the cold shoulder, they overlook the fact she once invested all that she was in being Prince Andrews wife. She made him happy, she bore him two children and they remain on good terms, even sharing a home. Surely that counts for something?Not with this family. The Windsors continue to treat her as though she is some contagious, rabid beggar, plucking at their sleeves and babbling.For Christmas after Christmas when her daughters were little, Sarah was banished to some lowly cottage in a bog on the Sandringham estate, deemed not fit to spend Christmas Day with her own children. Not fit to be with those upstanding members of the Royal Family who saw no hypocrisy in going to church every Christmas morning, as tradition and their conscience dictated. Who could fail to see the irony that there was no room at the inn for the Duchess.For her, it was a tur! key roas t for one on the loneliest day of the year. That had to hurt, although she never complained, even though, then and now, she continues to be treated as though she has leprosy instead of just a fatal capacity for being silly.During the quarter-century the Duchess of York has been in public life, it has often seemed that there has been nothing on her mind except her borrowed tiara. She has a unique gift for turning any advantage into a disaster, and is a calamity waiting to happen. Yet not even she deserves to be treated like this.It may be what royal protocol demands but it is not what you would call civilised.