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FERGIE IS RETURNING HOME TO BABY-OH, DEAR! NOW WHAT WILL PRESS

Dog days are closing in on Britain`s breathless tabloid newspapers. The Duchess of York is coming home soon.

The Duchess has been in Australia since Sept. 21 as part of a royal tour with her husband, Prince Andrew. She then stayed on to visit her sister and to spend some time with Andrew, a naval officer, while his ship is docked at Australian ports.

The visit itself has been uneventful: a handful of the dry official appearances familiar to Britain`s royal family, plus some relatively discreet nights on whatever town the couple was in.

But out of this dusty adventure has come what one British press critic called ”some of the most vicious, sneering headlines I can remember.”

The duchess, after all, is the former Sarah Ferguson, a free spirit better known to millions of British headline readers as Fergie. The prince is the former Randy Andy, whose escapades as a bachelor with a soft-porn movie actress made life more fun for tabloid writers of that era.

Now married for two years, Andy and Fergie are the parents of a 3-month-old daughter, Beatrice, whose headline name is Baby Bea. (Her parents`

desire to name her Annabel was vetoed by Queen Elizabeth, aware that this was also the name of a night club favored by the Fergie Set.)

When Fergie decided to leave Baby Bea, then 6 weeks old, to fly off to Australia for the royal tour with Andy, the tabloids exploded in scandalized self-righteousness. When she decided to stay on for a vacation as long as Andy`s ship was in Australian ports, the journalistic megatonnage tripled.

”You`re a national disgrace, Fergie,” the Daily Express said of ”this irresponsibly self-centered woman who has abandoned her daughter like an unwanted doll.”

The Sun, whose contribution to journalistic standards is its daily publication of a bare-breasted young woman on Page 3, ran a column by a writer named Fiona Macdonald Hull that called Fergie ”the Dreadful Duchess,”

”Frightful Fergie,” and ”a fat frump.”

”What I`d like to know,” inquired the Sun colunmnist, ”is why the Palace bothers to make excuses for this awful woman when we know how ghastly she is anyway.”

Most Americans would be startled to find this sort of thing even in supermarket scandal sheets. But it is daily fare for part of Britain`s press, in a nation that regards royals-watching as a leading spectator sport.

Of London`s 11 major daily newspapers, five are ”class” publications-including the Times, the Financial Times and the Independent-devoted to straightforward and sometimes first-rate news coverage and commentary.

The other six-including the Sun, Mirror, Express and Mail-are the

”mass” papers, penny dreadfuls for whom no headline is too big, no innuendo too snide and no fact worth checking.

For these papers, the domestic life of the royal family is catnip. The suggestion that a royal mother might be neglecting her child is guaranteed to generate columns of journalistic umbrage, aimed squarely at a readership of ordinary British mums pushing their prams.

For a while, their main target was Princess Diana, Prince Charles` wife. Was she anorexic? Was she stepping out on Charles? Was their marriage on the rocks?

Fergie has taken Diana off the hook. Diana, although a year younger than her sister-in-law, is seen almost as an elder stateswoman and a sterling wife and mum, compared with Fergie, who has not yet been beaten into public rectitude by the moralists of Fleet Street.

The papers know their audience. The Sun, which embarrasses even other newspapers, is the nation`s top seller, at 4.2 million copies daily. By contrast, the Financial Times, perhaps one of the world`s best papers, sells 282,000 copies.

In the middle are a few small voices of balance. The Evening Standard noted that, when Queen Elizabeth was a year old, her parents left her for a six-month royal tour.

”Strangely,” the Standard said, ”the Queen did not appear to feel that her young life was blighted by the experience.”