"In March 1992 the separation of the Duke and Duchess was announced.
If this was a warning that she should now change her ways and settle down, it did not seem to work.
Within the month Fergie was off on a trip to South East Asia with her two daughters and her "financial adviser", a tall, balding Texan named Johnny Bryan.
Apart from the cost of the trip - a cool pounds 55,000 - questions were naturally asked about who Mr Bryan was. He dressed like a Savile Row gent and was said to be a millionaire oil man. The truth turned out to be rather different.
Friends who saw them together say they behaved like boyfriend and girlfriend. She used to say to him, "Don't worry, just think about loving me and everything will be all right."
They used codenames when they spoke on the telephone. Later Bryan became bold enough to visit her at home, often being smuggled
in hidden in the boot of the car.
Often in Bryan's company, Fergie went on more and more trips to the States where her status as a duchess made her the centre of many fashionable dinner parties.
Fergie did not limit herself to social chit-chat. She was riotous company, even taking part in a bizarre "knighthood of a dog at one New York society party, pretending to be the Queen herself.
It was in August of that year that her most scandalous blunder took place after Fergie went to the South of France on holiday, escorted by Johnny Bryan.
They spent days by the pool at a luxury villa near St Tropez, in intimate conversation and positions.
Unfortunately there were photographers in the hills above the house and they captured Mr Bryan in the extraordinary act of sucking the sunburnt Duchess's toes.
The photographs - exclusively published in the Daily Mirror - were bound to put an end to the marriage, or so everyone thought.
How could she hold her head up now? How could she maintain that Bryan was simply her "financial advisor"?
In fact they continued to see each other in secret for some years."