Sarah Ferguson has faced her fair share of scandals over the years, although none compare to the situation she's currently in after her ex-husband, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, was stripped of his titles and evicted from Royal Lodge. But before the days of her infamous toe-sucking photos and money troubles, the former Duchess of York found herself facing accusations of plagiarism when she released her first children's book in the 1980s—an experience that caused Queen Elizabeth's press secretary to make a very serious declaration about the then-duchess.
Ferguson, who has authored dozens of fiction and nonfiction titles since then, released her first children's book in 1989. Inspired by her own flight lessons, Budgie: The Little Helicopter and the rest of the illustrated books in the series tell the story of a helicopter named Budgie and his friends. In Andrew Lownie's biography Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, he writes that Ferguson received an £85,000 publishing deal at the time and sold "over a hundred thousand copies off the back of widespread publicity."
