Fergie isn’t shrinking from the attention. Her $1 million campaign for Weight Watchers is in full swing. In the one-hour ABC special, we’ll see the slimmed-down duchess, 38, performing feats of daring including mountain climbing, trapeze swinging and the shark swim. Fergie admits she’s cashing in. She’s still working off a $1.6 million tax debt–ABC is reportedly paying her $250,000. But she also wants to show she can swim with the sharks–the ones with fins and the ones with reporters’ notebooks–without her husband, her ““HRH’’ or her good friend Diana. ““It’s difficult to be on your own when it was two of you and now it’s just one,’’ Fergie says about the princess. She’s fairly relaxed. Sitting last week in the nursery of the 50-room mansion built with the queen’s $8 million wedding gift, she wears running shorts and a sweat shirt, a ponytail and no makeup. She’s utterly unglamorous–the anti-Diana.
Of course, she’s been criticized for attempting to assume Diana’s place in the spotlight. ““If I had my way, I would have taken two months off after Diana’s death and gone into a bit of solitude–a time to heal,’’ she says. She won’t say much about anyone else in the royal family. She’s even relatively mum about ex-husband Prince Andrew, who lives with Fergie and their daughters, Beatrice, 9, and Eugenie, 7, on week-ends. Although she still wears her gold wedding ring, she says there’s no chance of a reconciliation. If she’s learned anything from her bumper-car ride through life, she says, it’s the importance of learning from her mistakes. ““Why don’t we have the courage to look at ourselves a bit more fully and change a few things?’’ she says. ““Fergie has come from huge adversities, and now she’s climbing rocks.’’ And dodging a few sticks and stones, too.
