Sarah Ferguson storms out of interview with Australia's 60 Minutes

The Duchess of York has stormed out of an interview with Australian current affairs programme 60 Minutes after she was forced to watch News of the World footage of herself offering to sell access to Prince Andrew.

By , in Sydney

11:58AM BST 12 Aug 2011

Sarah Ferguson became angry when interviewer Michael Usher played a video of her telling an undercover reporter from the paper that the sum os £500,000 would "open doors" to the prince.
Shortly later she walked out of the interview and demanded the segment be cut. John Scott, her manager in Australia, claimed she had been "ambushed" and ridiculed during the interview. He said making the Duchess sit through the footage again was unnecessary, because she had obviously seen it before.
Hamish Thomson, the 60 Minutes executive producer, said that the Duchess had agreed to talk about the incident, although it was not clear if she had agreed to watch the footage during the interview.
Since the on-camera argument, the Nine Network, which broadcasts 60 Minutes, has been heavily promoting the Duchess's performance as "the weirdest interview you'll ever see".
In excepts from the interview played on television to promote the programme, the Duchess can be seen snapping and glaring at Mr Usher, rolling her eyes, sighing and demanding producers "delete that bit."
Mr Scott has asked 60 Minutes to stop promoting the Duchess's appearance on the programme because it shows her in "the worst possible light".

"We had gone through all the questions and subject matter beforehand and filmed all the walking in the park footage before we sat down," he told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

"She did walk out when she was ambushed – no, it was entrapment – but after cooling down she said to me, '**** them, let's do this', and she did, but it was a banal interview and her demeanour reflected that."

The Nine Network has refused to pull advertisements for the interview, which is scheduled to go to air on Sunday night.

"He would be naive to think that we wouldn't use the most dramatic feature of the interview to promote the story, he's a professional media manager," Mr Thomson told the network's website, ninemsn.com.au.

On his blog, Mr Usher wrote that he originally thought he was getting on well with the Duchess, before "it went a bit south."

He went on to describe her as icier than "the wilds of the Arctic," saying the interview was testing and tense but also revealing.

60 Minutes, which is proud of its hard-hitting and often sensational style of journalism, is known for annoying celebrities. In 2005, Tom Cruise became upset and demanded that interviewer Peter Overton "put your manners back in" after he was questioned about Scientology and his marriage to Nicole Kidman.

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