Meet some of my husbands

A free re-post of a previous paid post

I have several husbands.

Obviously my main one is my real husband (one of the men in these pictures), with Gary Linekar my second husband.

Partly because we’ve been together the longest - since 1990 (World Cup) - but also, well, look at him.

And if that’s not enough watch him making his podcast The Rest is Football on Youtube. Wearing a black polo neck.

I met Hugh just after that, in 1991 when he played my favourite composer, Chopin in Impromptu.

We had an on and off thing, but I didn’t actually marry him until 2001, with the ceremony happening the moment the lift doors opened in Bridget Jones Diary and he stepped out.

Danny is my most recent spouse. That marriage came about a few years ago after I completely randomly happened to turn on his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

I’d heard of him, but never seen him in anything - but the moment I clocked him walking down Mile End Road at the start of the show, with the most classic Cockney strut I’ve ever seen, we got engaged.

By the end of the show we’d got married, had the reception and the honeymoon and were celebrating our first anniversary. Here’s a clip to give you a flavour.

Since his recent appearance in Rivals, we’ve renewed our vows. That was a lovely party.

Looking at the pictures up at the top there, it doesn’t escape my notice that there’s a bit of a theme. I do like a dark-haired gentleman, not too tall, good cheekbones, who can pull off a fitted shirt.

But more important than that is they must have savvy SMARTS, natural style, sound values and ultra GSOH, which all of these chaps have in abundance.

Here is my Gary presenting Match of the Day after he’d made a bet with the British nation that if his home team Leicester City won the Premier League he’d present it in his underpants.

They won it.

On the smarts front, as well as being a former Captain of England and the BBC’s highest paid presenter, he owns Goalhanger the company behind his podcast, plus The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics. So all the best ones, really.

For values, he nearly got sacked by the Beeb for his political tweets - such as when he likened the Conservative government’s new policy on immigration as “not dissimilar to Nazi Germany”.

As for Danny’s smarts and values, I’ve posted his legendary live comment on Brexit on here before, but it always pays another viewing.

As for Hugh Grant. He went to Oxford, for starters, but better than that he ad libbed all Daniel Cleaver’s best lines in Bridget Jones.

For example, when he and Brig get it on the first time and she’s wearing big pants, he says: “Hello, Mummy!”, closely followed by “I’m wearing something similar myself…”

I remember barking with laughter at those corkers the first time I saw the film, before I knew he’d come up with them both on the spur of the moment during filming.

More recently I watched this clip of him talking about his acting ‘process’ which I found fascinating. With jokes.

The latest chunk of Hugh Grant wit comes via a piece that popped up recently on the British Vogue website, where he interviews Renee Zelwegger, promoting the new Bridget Jones film.

It’s very badly laid out (Maggie the magazine editor speaking), but my Hugh’s writing starts from the words ‘Claridges has complicated memories for me…’

If he’d sent that intro to me I would have hired him immediately as a writer without even seeing him.

Read it here.

As for the other bloke in the pictures - is he funny, is he smart, are his values sound?

Reader, I married him.

Here is the audio version of this piece.

Note to beloved and treasured Paidies

I did mention a few posts ago that I would occasionally repost a Paid post as Free, in the hope of luring in some new subscribers.

I was compelled to do this today as the amazing

India Knight

(who I consider to be the Actual Kveen of Substack) mentioned me in her very moving post about the birth of her daughter - who arrived with an undetected heart defect, which required immediate surgery and has just turned a sparkling 21.

India very kindly included a link to Style Notes in her post (read by thousands), so I thought I’d better have something waiting that people can look at.

Normal service will resume shortly.