Oliver! star Lester asks for more marriage
AS THE child star of classic musical Oliver!, Mark Lester was treated with stupefied astonishment and dragged off by his ear when he dared ask for more.
Happily, the 61-year- old actor has received a far friendlier reaction when he dared ask for more again — proposing marriage to his latest love.
I can reveal that Lester, who was a close friend of ‘king of f pop pop’ Michael Jackson, has become ome engaged to an American an woman 21 years his junior. r.
Brooke Hamilton, who is the PR chief of a U.S. tech firm, will be Lester’s third wife.
‘At first, I thought: “Hmm, do I really want to?”’ he admits. ‘But I’ve always had the attitude: Never say never.
‘When I met Brooke, we e just clicked straight away; y; all my children adore her and my parents really like her. She’s just a very easy person to get t on with. I’ve been over to the States a few times and I thought: “Hey, why not?”’
Lester, who was cast in Oliver! at the age of eight, has been courting Brooke for two years and proposed to her in a restaurant in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, on her 40th birthday at the weekend.
He declines to say if fellow diners joined him in a chorus of ‘ Consider yourself one of the family’.
Now an osteopath in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Lester has four adult children with his first wife, Jane, a Engaging: Brooke Hamilton and Mark Lester. Inset, as Oliver radiographer. r He is godfather to all three of Jackson’s children. After the singer’s death in 2009, Lester claimed he could c be the biological father fa of Jackson’s daughter, ter, Paris, because he had acted acte as a sperm donor for him. However, H the Jacksons’ lawyer rejected rej the claim. Lester tells me that neither he nor Brooke has any interest in adding to his brood. ‘ We’ve had the conversation, and going through changing nappies again is not something I really want to do,’ he says. The couple have not yet set a date for the wedding, but Brooke’s cooking has no doubt left Lester’s son Felix humming Food Glorious Food. Says Lester: ‘ He’s just gone off to university and comes back especially to enjoy her American- style pancakes.’