Fergie: Quite a Dish

By Stephen M. Silverman

05/01/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

She's pitched weight-loss programs and financial investment firms, but now Sarah Ferguson is pitching dishes -- Wedgwood, to be exact. No, she's not breaking them, but promoting them. On Friday, reports PEOPLE, the Duchess of York spoke to a throng of more than 500 people who turned out at Hecht's department store in McLean, Va., to hear her personal insights about setting a fine table. Some got their china autographed. "We're going to play," the 41-year-old ex-wife of Prince Andrew announced to the gathering of mostly women, "because I like to play, as you might know." To show she wasn't kidding, at one point during her half-hour demo, Fergie quipped, "Don't say my bottom's big because I've got three radio mikes strapped in the back. And if you don't believe me, hold on, I'll show you." Which, by lifting the back of her long navy jacket, she did. Jokes aside, the slight indignity of her suburban commercial appearance wasn't lost on her, either. "I'm a working mum, and I've got two children," she said, "and I have to meet the budget at the end of every month . . . Therefore, I'm grateful to the companies that I work for. I only work for companies that I believe I can learn from."