Graceless and imprudent, occasionally lewd, she failed to be royal The fresh-air experimentfoundered. But then it was always rather a limited exercise in getting real. We should not be altogether surprised that the duchess, exhausted by her conspicuous, compulsive consumption, now resembles ectoplasm with hair.. CONSIDER two reports that appeared in Friday morning’s newspapers. Within months, it was overshadowed by publication of photographs of the bare-breasted duchess having her toes sucked by her financial adviser.The marriage will end, if the Queen has anything to do with it, and the duchess will lose her HRH title. Why all that climbing in the Himalayas? Why Romania? Poland? Recently she has scaled back, to concentrate on earning a living.She always loved the jetset life, and in the summer of 1990 she flew to Morocco in the private jet of a Texan millionaire, Steve Wyatt. That August, she dragged him, uninvited, to a dinner party hosted by Lord McAlpine at Le Gavroche.

Wyatt insisted: “Mah woman and I sit together,” and he and his woman then treated the assembled company to what one described subsequently as “a display of mutual fondling”.Eighteen months later, photographs of the pair on holiday with Beatrice and Eugenie were discovered at a flat previously rented by Wyatt in Eaton Square. Weeks after that, on 19 March 1992, the duke and duchess’s separation was announced It didn’t draw a line under anything. But since her separation, her charitable activities have been noticeably erratic. A passionate plea for donations to her American charity, Chances For Children which preceded a sale of Budgie products at Bloomingdales, left some with the mistaken impression the two were connected.It might be queried why a member of the British Royal Family would want to be involved with an American charity anyway. It was a terrible mistake, but she was still making it years later. She was idle and indulged, and it brought out all her worst characteristics.

Staff complained of her unreasonableness, her growing arrogance. Most damagingly, she failed to establish clear boundaries between her public and private life, leading to confusion about whether the proceeds of the Budgie books were going to charity, when she was actually keeping 90 per cent of them for herself. She built a 50-room house that looked like a pizza parlour, because she was closer in spirit to rich Americans than to the stuffy Brits. When she was in public she behaved like a thigh-slapping Hooray.The Palace officials, terrified some “tradition” might be breached, allowed, or perhaps even encouraged her to give up her job.