Princess Beatrice will raise money for charity by auctioning the much-ridiculed hat she wore to the royal wedding on eBay.  The Philip Treacy hat the final-year Goldsmiths student wore was almost as talked about as Pippa Middleton’s bottom, with bloggers, Facebook users and newspaper columnists chiming in to criticise it.

One Facebook page compared it to a uterus, while over 70 per cent of people who took a poll on The Huffington Post agreed that it was “truly horrendous”.

Princess Beatrice’s decision to auction the hat for charity was revealed by her mother, Sarah Ferguson, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

“She’s putting it up on eBay to auction it for UNICEF and for Children in Crisis,” the Duchess of York told the talk show host.

Irish milliner Treacy has defended Princess Beatrice’s hat and the one he created for her sister Princess Eugenie. “I thought they looked gorgeous,” he said. “The head is the most important part of the body to embellish, because it’s what you meet.”

A source told the Daily Mail that 22-year-old Princess Beatrice sees the funny side of the reaction to her hat: “She really does have a sense of humour. She knows the world had a bit of a laugh at her but this is hopefully a way of turning the attention into something positive.”

In the same Oprah Winfrey interview, Sarah Ferguson, 51, spoke of her hurt at having been left off the royal wedding invitation list. “It was so difficult. Because I wanted to be there with my girls and to be getting them dressed and to go as a family,” she said.

Bidding began with the entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne offering £5,000. He is also a UNICEF UK ambassador and said:

Whatever anyone thinks of the hat it’s fantastic that Princess Beatrice is doing this for UNICEF and Children in Crisis. Good for her! I’ve seen the life-saving work that Unicef does for children in Bolivia and Haiti and every penny raised really will change children’s lives around the world. I’d encourage anyone to get bidding to raise as much money as possible. For once I don’t mind if I don’t walk away with the deal.