Bloody cheek.
It’s not every day a com moner is graced with the personage of a card-carry ing, blue-blooded, bone headed duchess. But Sarah Ferguson irritably dragged her hips into the Javits Center yesterday at the crack of 8:30, and proceeded to whine, kvetch and play the victim in a British accent as impenetrable as Scotland Yard.
And, judging from the crowd she attracted, which coated the convention center like a lover’s saliva on Fergie’s well-traveled toes, the world’s greediest, tackiest and brokest royal is quickly accomplishing a feat that has eluded her back home in England, where the weary populace is ready to lop off her head: She’s royally cashing in.
Fergie, 50, slumped into breakfast at Book Expo America in a black blazer and polka-dot dress, rubbing red-rimmed eyes and complaining about the hour. It was days after she was videotaped soliciting a $750,000 bribe in exchange for arranging introductions to her ex-hubby, Prince Andrew. Turns out, the briber was a British reporter, proving beyond a doubt that this writer of kids’ lit isn’t fit to lecture farm animals about morality.
And she never saw a scandal too tawdry to exploit.
Lucky for Fergie, disgraceful behavior runs a close second to sex when it comes to upgrading the bottom line. And no shame was big enough to get between Fergie and a potential windfall.
She was at Book Expo to emcee an authors’ panel and pump her books. Instead, she proved three things:
1. She confessed she was “unclear” about the names of lesser scribes before her, blaming her failure to prepare in advance not on early-onset Alzheimer’s, but on stalking reporters. “It was quite difficult for me to get to Javits Center,” she said, omitting the “the” and drawing snickers. “One or two people in my way.”
2. She arrived a full half-hour late to her book-signing, although the event was just up the escalator from breakfast. This caused nervous peons to yell excitedly into cellphones. (“Where is my author?!”) Finally, she materialized with four bodyguards in tow, a sight unseen at a book thing since the fatwah against Salman Rushdie, a show of narcissism that librarian Christina Raap called “rude.”
3. Lest you forget, Fergie, not Andy, not the entire book industry, is the victim here. “I should take a leaf from my own book — ‘Ashley Learns About Strangers,’ ” she said. Pause. “And ‘Matthew and the Bullies.’
“As you know, I really don’t like grown-ups.”
With Fergie, subtitles can be helpful. At one alarming point in her spiel, the name of her daughter Beatrice, who Fergie revealed suffers from dyslexia, came out sounding, to American ears, like a word that rhymes with “rich.”
Fergie is milking her scandal like a con woman. The crowd loved her, but not all for the right reasons. Clutching his autographed copy of “Emily’s First Day of School,” Tim Donick of suburban Suffern cracked, “Anyone who goes out topless is top-notch in my book!”
At a later book event at the Campbell Apartments at Grand Central, Fergie allowed, “We all make mistakes, but, yes, we go on and dust ourselves off.”
Then, divulging her relocation designs, Fergie told The Post’s Amber Sutherland she had “no plans to move to New York,” though she’d keep her options open.
“I love New York and I’ll still be the Duchess of New York if they’ll let me,” she cooed.
Fergie is but the animal act at the end of the circus, an aging drama queen who has worn out her welcome. There is a reason the British reporter tried to bribe her. Clearly, he knew she would not refuse.
Don’t we have enough home-grown reprobates? Fergie, stay away.
MTA’s great expectoration$
Spitting is icky. It spreads germs and makes the spittee feel sticky, grumpy and in need of a handkerchief. But in yet another case of Your Tax Dollars at Work, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union have teamed up to award the spit-upon a type of combat pay.
Last year, 51 bus drivers took an average 64 days of paid sick leave — with one slacker recuperating at home for a whopping 191 days — to recover from assault by expectoration.
MTA officials said at least some of the drivers were “traumatized” by their role as mouth-juice magnets.
Might be time to invest in an umbrella. And look for another line of work.
Cash-source mosquerade
The $100 million mega-mosque set to rise over Ground Zero won’t be financed with dimes and nickels dropped in collection plates. Mosque founder Imam Abdul Rauf told a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that he expects to raise a chunk of change from the Islamic world — although he’s told American reporters the funds would come entirely from within the United States.
The specter of a mosque and cultural center rising 13 stories two blocks from the site of the murderous 9/11 attacks has relatives of those killed at the World Trade Center feeling doubly maimed. Debra Burlingame, whose brother piloted the hijacked plane that was crashed into the Pentagon, believes that the secret funding sources reveals that mosque-makers want to convert Americans to Islam.
We don’t need a monster mosque. Not at Ground Zero. Not in New York.
Shooting to ill
We won’t have a chance.
Two years after three detectives were acquitted of all charges in the justified killing of Sean Bell, some members of the brain trust in Albany want to make the entire police force — and innocent bystanders — pay. A bill working its way up the Capitol food chain would erase cops’ ability to make split-second, life-and-death decisions to shoot to kill, and require that officers confronting bad guys shoot to wound. If cops do kill, count on there being hell to pay.
No one wants to see an unarmed man die. But on his last night alive, Bell was drunk and armed with a 2-ton automobile that he used to hit one of the cops, who had every reason to believe Bell carried a gun. You don’t get do-overs in this line of work. Let’s hope the bill vanishes before it does harm.
Sequel in store for gutted Qns. movie palace
To kids growing up in monotonous Queens, the RKO Keith theater in Flushing was more than a movie house.
It was palace able to transport visitors into a Technicolor world complete with a flashy lobby fountain, gaudy, Moorish chairs and what looked like a starlit ceiling.
Keith devotees felt angry and helpless as the former vaudeville house was gutted and fell into criminal disrepair over the past two decades.
Now, finally, the building where I spent many a day cutting school has a buyer who wants to turn it into condos. The Keith lives. May the glory return.