Predictably the Duchess of York is not getting a lot of sympathy in the press for offering to “sell” her former husband Prince Andrew in a News of the World sting.

I agree that she is fatally flawed and has, time and time again, showed herself to be grasping, foolish and greedy.

But I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her on this occasion. It seems she is a desperate woman: desperate for money. A few years ago she was broke and managed to claw her way back through her own hard work, being a figurehead for WeightWatchers, writing children’s books and so on. Now it seems she is broke again, and while you have to wonder at the profligacy that must be at play here, and the ineptitude of her financial advisors, you have to feel sorry for a woman of 50 with very little to offer than those precarious royal connections.

If it is true that she received just £15,000 a year in her divorce settlement, then shame on the royal family. Sarah Ferguson was always going to be a lolose cannon so they should have ensured she received enough income so that she doesn’t have to keep signing up for pitiful endeavours like the ITV documentaries she was making but has now been fired from.

It is surely only a matter of time before the hapless creature turns up on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.