They were never likely to pass unnoticed. Sarah Ferguson cut a vivid figure as the classic, booming Sloane, laughing loudly as she swept through the paddock with a black velvet bow tied into her long red hair. Paddy McNally, meanwhile, had the reputation of a polished rogue: a smooth-talking playboy known in some circles as “The Toad”, a nickname said to reflect both his plain appearance and his slippery charm.
In the early 1980s, Ferguson was still largely unknown beyond the glamour and noise of Formula One. Her royal future, and her relationship with the man then known as Prince Andrew, lay ahead. At the time, she was a carefree former chalet girl in a relationship with McNally, a one-time racing driver whose own career on the track had stalled but who was becoming a major force in F1’s fast-growing hospitality industry.
That venture would ultimately transform McNally into one of Britain’s wealthiest men. By the time of his death last week at the age of 88, his fortune was estimated at £600 million, placing him 238th on the UK rich list.
News of his death quickly prompted speculation about whether McNally — who was widowed before he met Ferguson and never married again — might have provided a lasting answer to the former duchess’s long-running financial difficulties.
The pair had remained close for more than 40 years, their friendship enduring through Ferguson’s marriage to Andrew, their divorce, and the years in which her spending and debts repeatedly drew public scrutiny.
McNally was also said to have stayed loyal as Ferguson faced renewed controversy in recent months over her two-decade friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, details of which resurfaced in the so-called Epstein Files and contributed to her withdrawal from public life.
After she and Andrew were removed from Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park last February, Ferguson is understood to have travelled first to an Austrian spa before spending time at McNally’s home in Switzerland.
One associate said last night that McNally, whose health had been failing for several years, let Ferguson stay at his £25 million chalet — a property nicknamed “Cocaine Castle” because of the parties he once held there during his more hedonistic years — simply “because he always wanted to help her”.
In the early 1980s, Sarah Ferguson was a fun-loving former chalet girl who was going out with Paddy McNally, a failed racing car driver who found himself at the forefront of the burgeoning F1 hospitality business
At the time, Fergie was a virtual unknown outside the world of Formula One (photo from 1983)
She had yet to meet her future husband, then known as Prince Andrew
The associate said: ‘The first question everyone thought was, “Is Paddy going to bail her out for good?” He was fiercely loyal to her throughout her scandals, and there were many.
‘Even in recent months he’s let her stay in his chalet. If he’s left her life-changing money, wouldn’t that be something?’
Another man, who moved in the same circles as Fergie, added: ‘Paddy was shrewd. No one would be surprised if he’s left her a house and cash, but you can bet it’s in a private trust with a monthly income. He’d never give her a lump sum because he knows how easily she’d blow through it.’
Fergie is said to be ‘devastated’ by the death of the man she once described as a ‘father figure’ and ‘mentor’, telling one interviewer: ‘He taught me so much about life. When I wanted advice I turned to him. He seemed to have seen and done everything.’
When I read about McNally’s death my mind instantly went back to one summer in the early 1980s, when I went to the British Grand Prix with my best friend from school, whose father was a director of one of the teams.
It was an alien world to me, an Army brat raised on military bases around the world before my family settled in rural Hampshire. ‘Fergie’ – who was known by that nickname before the tabloids took an interest in her – was only seven years older than me but it felt like she’d come from another planet.
Brash, confident and loud, her father Ron ‘The Galloping Major’ Ferguson was polo manager for Prince Charles.
She had been a chalet girl in Verbier, Switzerland, where she met McNally, 22 years her senior. He hired her to be nanny for his sons Sean and Rollo. He was separated from his wife Anne ‘Twist’ Downing, a Monte Carlo heiress, who died from cancer in 1980.
An associate of Fergie’s said of McNally: ‘He was fiercely loyal to her throughout her scandals, and there were many’ (pictured at Silverstone in 1997)
Another man, who moved in the same circles as Fergie, added: ‘Paddy was shrewd. No one would be surprised if he’s left her a house and cash’ (pictured in 1999)
Fergie had been a chalet girl in Verbier, Switzerland, where she met McNally, 22 years her senior (pictured: Fergie with her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie at McNally’s chalet)
When I saw them at Silverstone, Fergie and McNally were boyfriend and girlfriend, but he would openly flirt with the scores of beautiful women who hung around drivers like Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet and a young Nigel Mansell, who was still in his early Formula 1 career.
While the circuit was undoubtedly glamorous, it was nothing like the multi-billion-pound industry it is today.
McNally, the fifth of an RAF doctor’s six children, had tried his hand at motor racing but failed, before peddling vacuum cleaners door-to-door to make money. He later wrote about racing for Autosport magazine, which brought him into the orbit of F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone.
Then he had a brilliant idea.
What about offering corporate sponsorship deals and charging businessmen a hefty fee to become members of what he would call ‘The Paddock Club’, an exclusive trackside hospitality suite where you could sip champagne against the backdrop of roaring racing cars, leggy blondes and legendary drivers like Mario Andretti?
It was an instant success.
In many ways, dating Fergie, with her booming posh voice and royal connections through her father, was a savvy business decision for McNally.
She was a ‘Sloane Ranger’, a breed of upper-class young men and women who wore Barbour jackets, tweed skirts and blouses with frilly collars, and flitted between homes ‘in town’ and ‘the country’.
The set was then in its pomp, and The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook topped the best-seller list a year after we met.
While McNally brought in motor racing people, Fergie brought in her friends: handsome, entitled – and very rich – young men and women from the landed gentry. She was wild.
James Hunt, the 1976 world champion was, by then, the BBC’s commentator alongside Murray Walker. For some inexplicable reason he took pity on me as a fish out of water and we became firm friends.
James, a legendary womaniser himself, had little time for McNally, who he called ‘a chancer’. McNally had briefly worked for James as an assistant.
For some inexplicable reason James Hunt took pity on me as a fish out of water and we became firm friends, writes Caroline Graham
When I saw them at Silverstone, Fergie and McNally were boyfriend and girlfriend, but he would openly flirt with the scores of beautiful women who hung around drivers like Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet and a young Nigel Mansell (pictured: Mansell’s car in 1983)
James told me he’d had the misfortune to stay in a hotel room next to Fergie and her lover during one of that season’s races and described her as ‘the loudest woman I’ve ever heard’.
He was furious because her screams of passion had kept him awake all night. James would yell: ‘Oh Paddy! Oh Paddy!’ every time Fergie walked past. To her credit, she took it in good humour.
McNally’s company took off. In the next couple of years I watched as his hospitality suites became larger and more professional. He signed corporate sponsorship deals with everyone.
When you went into The Paddock Club there would be boxes and boxes of free Marlboro cigarettes. He promoted Rolex watches and Chanel perfume.
And he became very rich, something Fergie, who was always struggling to keep up with her peers financially, undoubtedly appreciated.
Parties at his ‘Cocaine Castle’ in Verbier (the chalet was officially called Les Gais Lutins, or ‘The Merry Elves’) became legendary. One young member of an aristocratic family broke his arm falling off the roof during a romantic tryst with a ‘lady of the night’.
Another time, an enraged McNally came home to find a car blocking his garage so drove straight into it, smashing both vehicles and destroying his garage door.
He had a permanent table at a nearby nightclub called The Farm Club, where he would entertain high-profile friends like Princess Stephanie of Monaco.
One New Year’s Eve, he had caviar flown in from St Petersburg.
He served as best man to Jamie Blandford, now the Duke of Marlborough, when he wed his first wife, Becky Few Brown, in 1990, buying the couple a gun-metal grey Range Rover as a wedding gift and shocking guests with tales of the groom’s misbehaviour.
But McNally would humiliate Fergie in front of friends, too. She would complain he called her ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’. On one occasion she was waiting in the chalet and he brought home a glamorous Swiss woman. He gave her the option to ‘have a threesome or f*** off’.
In the end Fergie gave him an ultimatum at the 1985 Italian Grand Prix: marry me or else.
James later told me: ‘Of course, Paddy chose the “or else”.’
That June, McNally drove Fergie to a party at Windsor Castle, where she would hit it off with Andrew. The pair married the next year.
Some friends believe she was always in love with McNally.
One woman said: ‘If Paddy had married her there would have been no Andrew. I think Fergie rebounded into that relationship and, after playing second fiddle to Paddy for so long, I think she loved being the centre of attention, with everything marrying a prince brought her. She bought into the fairytale which, of course, turned into a nightmare.’
McNally’s wealth was always there to shield her.
He bought James Bond author Ian Fleming’s £40million Grade II listed home Sevenhampton Place in Wiltshire, which became Fergie’s refuge as her marriage to Andrew crumbled.
Then there was his villa, Le Clos de Meaux in the South of France, as well as a total of three ski chalets in Verbier and a grouse moor in Scotland.
One long-time friend said: ‘Paddy adored Fergie. He never married her but then he never married anyone after his first wife. Fergie was good to his boys and he was good to her girls.’
For years, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie would enjoy ski holidays courtesy of McNally, who would lavish the girls with expensive gifts like designer handbags and couture skiwear.
Tragically, McNally outlived his elder son Sean, who died unexpectedly earlier this year in his 50s.
A friend said: ‘It’s been rather mysterious. There was nothing about Sean’s death in the papers. Paddy has been in failing health for years but losing his son was a blow which hit him hard.’
And, so, back to the money.
McNally sold his business, Allsport Management, in 2006 for £262million. He retired in 2011.
Friends from that world would see him every year at a barbecue he would throw beside the pool of the sprawling Wiltshire estate to celebrate the British Grand Prix.
McNally ended up buying two adjoining properties to his manor: a Jacobean house set in 165 acres and the 500-acre Hampton Farm.
From talking to those closest to McNally I would be stunned if he hasn’t left her a sizeable chunk of his £600million fortune.
One friend said: ‘He lived fairly quietly for the last few years. He had a tight circle of friends and Sarah was at the heart of it. They talked on the phone all the time, even when he was very sick.’
One lawyer friend says McNally was changing his will up to the end: ‘His eldest son died. There were codicils [legal documents to make minor changes to a will].’
While the will is likely to become public, McNally’s fortune is tied up in private Swiss trusts to shield the eventual benefactors of his vast estate. Some believe that, as in life, McNally will look after his long-time friend.
One source said: ‘Of course he’s going to look after Fergie. They were in each other’s lives for longer than they were ever married to their spouses. He promised to always take care of her and he will.’
