Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the beleaguered Duchess of York, has finally met her reputational Waterloo. Despite showily cutting off all contact with the paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction and imprisonment for sex offences, it has emerged that she sent Epstein a toadying email in 2011 calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family’. She insisted in the leaked message that she had not called him a paedophile (ironic, really, because he very much was). Fergie has now been dropped by several of the charities where she was a patron.

It is arguable how much value the duchess really offered to the children’s hospice Julia’s House or the food charity the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, even when she was in greater favour, given that she has been tainted by association – and continued loyalty – to her ex-husband Prince Andrew for many years now. Both charities have both used the wording that ‘it would be inappropriate for her to continue’ working with them, and the Natasha Allergy organisation added the additional snipe that ‘Sarah Ferguson has not been actively involved with the charity for some years.’ Other charities have followed suit in ditching the duchess – who has previously admitted to receiving £15,000 from Epstein – including the Teenage Cancer Trust. The charity said in its statement: ‘We have made the decision to end our relationship with the Duchess of York, and as of today she is no longer a patron of Teenage Cancer Trust’. It’s a brutal ending to a 35-year relationship.

Still, up until now, Fergie has been one of the luckiest figures in British public life. Despite not being over blessed with intelligence (she once confided in Oprah Winfrey in 2010 that she was an ‘idiotic’ and ‘stupid’ woman), she has continued to eke out a living from various sources which have included everything from being a children’s author to, of all things, a film producer and a Weight Watchers spokeswoman. Even the revelations about her financial profligacy in Andrew Lownie’s new biography Entitled, embarrassing though they were, did not have the same impact on her reputation that they did on her former husband’s. Most people perceived her as dim, rather than malicious.

But taking cover behind not being very bright is not enough to get away with the revelations of her continued association with Epstein. She may have written in her now-cursed email to the sex offender that ‘I know you feel hellaciously let down by me’, but in fact it is most likely to be those charities and other public institutions who gave the duchess endless amounts of goodwill and second and third chances who will feel the most betrayed by the revelations. There have been other embarrassments before, of course, such as the 2010 story of how she attempted to sell access to Prince Andrew for money, which led to the Oprah apologia, but this is on a wholly different scale and level.

Is there any way back into the public’s affections for Fergie? It is hard to see that there is. It is possible to believe her excuse that she was frightened of Epstein’s aggressive legal threats and that the email was done out of panic, but, to be honest, calling a convicted sexual offender a paedophile is hardly an inaccurate statement. Once again, it shows her appalling judgement and near-desperate readiness to be impressed by someone wealthy and powerful. She has not been a core member of the royal family for a considerable time, but anyone who saw her and her former husband at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral last week might have wondered if they were having a last hurrah before another damning piece of news came into the public domain.

Well, now it has. Unless something deeply unexpected happens, it looks likely that she and Prince Andrew will be stuck together forever in Royal Lodge, ruing the mistakes that they made. The most egregious of these must have been ever taking Epstein’s dollars. The man had a reverse Midas touch, turning everything he came into contact with into filth. Fergie’s downfall is just the latest instalment in his posthumous, unlovely influence. It could yet stretch even further, but whatever happens, the Duchess of York has surely ended her strange, prolific and finally rather sad career in the public eye.