Lance A Little?

‘IMAGINE Magnus Magnusson winning Mastermind by answering all the questions before the contestant in the famous chair had had a chance to open his or her mouth.

Imagine Cilla Black taking a shine to Blind Date contestant No.3 – ‘our Brian from Solihull’ – and deciding to accompany him on a weekend in Copenhagen.

Or imagine Chris Tarrant writing himself a cheque for a million pounds after answering the 15 questions on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

It’s not easy to envisage any of the above scenarios – but then none of the people mentioned is Ulrika Jonsson.

Only the Swedish former weather presenter could have hosted a dating show called Mr Right and managed to beat off the 15 young suitors to claim the man as her own.

And this week she finds herself on the front cover of Hello! with the man in question – former Duke Of York’s equerry and all-round stuffed shirt Lance Gerrard-Wright.

The two are getting married next month at Ulrika’s £1m Swedish hideaway on the tiny island of Varmdo, near Stockholm.

‘His first marriage and her second will be a small, family affair at a quiet seafront location,’ says Hello! (which has clearly already scoped out the area for the best vantage point).

It will also be ‘away from the paparazzi and in keeping with Ulrika’s new low-key image after a turbulent relationship history’.

This would be the low-key image that saw her release an autobiography in which not only did she reveal her affair with the England football coach but also accused a well-known TV presenter of raping her.

But what of Lance? The ex-Army major managed to get turned down by not one but two girls on the TV show, but the great thing about Ulrika is that she can speak several different languages but doesn’t know the word for ‘no’ in any of them.

She describes their courtship as ‘a bit like when you slow-cook a chicken, nice and tender, rather than frying it quickly and spitting it out because it is tough and awful’.

Which of the many fried meals Ulrika has had she is referring to we don’t know, but Hello! certainly knows of the Swede’s partiality to poultry.

‘In retrospect,’ it says, ‘it was perhaps inevitable that the good-looking charmer with old-fashioned manners and Action Man reputation and the gregarious blonde with the hard-earned wisdom should be drawn to each other.’

‘Gregarious’ may be a kind euphemism for a woman who has spent longer staring at ceilings than Michaelangelo, but what of her fiance’s ‘Action Man reputation’?

Could it be that the only lance this major possesses is under First Name in his passport?
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Posted: 9th, July 2003 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink