Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Sarah, Duchess of York" video.

  1. It’s a difficult one to speculate about. If the Duchess was approached by a representative of Big Brother and didn’t give a flat, “no,” immediately, anyone can stretch a point and call that, “negotiations.” But, what I remember about her, most of all, was an interview she gave not long after divorcing the Prince. She ended the interview abruptly, when questioned about her corrupt financial dealings and has never answered for any of that as far as I know. Seems she was cut from a similar cloth to Edward? EDIT: I should qualify that. I’m referring to the 60 Minutes interview, in which they discussed a News Of The World sting operation (footage still available on YouTube) in which the Duchess was selling access to Prince Andrew to business representatives, while Andrew was still the Business Ambassador. She destroyed the world’s trust in the idea of the Brits as fair dealing, as well as a good deal of trust in the Royal family. Andrew claimed no knowledge of her dealings, which only begs the question. If you look at the footage, she is as brazen and blatant as they come, putting a $50,000 dollar price on, “Doors opened, full access,” to Andrew for trade discussions and, presumably, preferential treatment over others who just go through legitimate channels. So, if he really didn’t know, that makes her twice the con artist she already appears to be. Yes, she said she had a, “wake up call,” and claims she was only ever corrupted that one time. But it is obvious that she had been running this scam for a long time, with price points for each level of her shady dealing. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d had booklets published, to save time with the patter. In the end, she got to reframe the whole thing, used super injunctions to silence the press, told a pack of lies in her book about it, and got away with the whole thing. She disgusts me.
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  2. Oh, I’m sure she’s been offered eye watering sums to get her into that environment, in which one could never maintain one’s psychological defences 24/7 to such a level that things wouldn’t start coming out. And I would expect the producers, having so much data from many years of experience, would go to the extent of training one or more of the other housemates in techniques for winning her trust and breaking down those defences. It’s a grubby business. But she is not free of her own scandals, either. And she’s certainly mercenary enough to consider it. I imagine it was the House of Windsor who stepped in a crushed the whole thing outright, ultimately? I can never forget the blatancy with which she sold access to Prince Andrew as the trade envoy. The callous shamelessness of her behaviour sticks with me. And her Mea Culpas were utterly unconvincing, accompanied as they were by super injunctions from the palace and her getting to tell her own unchallenged version of events. She represents everything sinister about the, “establishment,” in my eyes.
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