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Anne Robinson is busy sorting the frogs from the princes. Or, as acid-tongued Annie puts it, 'the princes from the prats'.
Now a prat, it turns out, is a fat, thick bloke who reads Autocar. (Television's Queen of Mean has a thing about obesity. She doesn't much like the Welsh or people who live in Coventry for that matter, either.)
And a prince? 'Speed of thought, wit, generosity of spirit, fitness ? and someone who doesn't read Autocar,' she says. 'It's quite difficult to find people who punch at my weight. You find a lot of men are frogs and prats, and the occasional ones are rather fun.
'There are one or two who float around. I like one nice man because he gets three tickets for the cinema so we've got somewhere to put our coats. He passes the test. I've been quite surprised because I really didn't expect to be wined and dined, and it's quite nice. I've had a lot of dates, but I don't think there's been anyone that special or important.'
Which could come as something of a blow to the 'nice man' who's kind to coats.
Anne, you see, is 64 and single, having finalised her divorce from her second husband and former manager, John Penrose, last year after 27 years of marriage. She had to stomp up a massive ?20 million, a third of her estimated ?62 million, but got to keep a townhouse in London's Kensington, a penthouse in New York and a mansion on nearby Long Island, and a cottage in Gloucestershire.
Anne likes her houses; money, too. She didn't like getting divorced.
'It was like having a car crash every day once we parted,' she says. 'I was taken aback, since I'd decided it was what I wanted. I didn't expect it to be quite so emotional, so that really took me by surprise. You delude yourself. You think you're not going to pick up a tab from it, but you feel you're walking round in someone else's reading glasses.
'I think we were both very sad. We'd have to have hearts of stone not to. You just feel quite low. You feel quite joyless for a bit for no good reason.
It's not because you want the marriage back or you feel you've made a bad decision, but you do have those first times when you do this or that.
'I remember arriving at Nice airport and having to take all my luggage on a bus to another terminal to hire a car and I thought, "I've never done this on my own before."
'So, there is a sort of first time you take a hire car, or when you have no one to zip up the back of your dress.
'But my firsts are probably different to anyone else's. I'm not most people. Like everything else I do, I never do it by the book. It wasn't as if everyone was saying to me, "That's a fabulous idea to be on your own when you're in your 60s."'
Continues >>
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