Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE DIARY Stace: My babyblues
MADGE LIKES PASTA, DON’T PREACH...
Katie Price was keen to wait until she was sure she’d found Mr Right before getting engaged for the eighth time.
So a full 10 months after they started dating, she’s confirmed plans to wed Carl Woods, after the former Love Islander first consulted her 15-year-old son.
“It was amazing,” she says, teasing details of his proposal to OK magazine. “Carl asked my mum and dad for permission – and Junior.
“It’s refreshing to be with a man who, if I decided I never wanted to work again, he’d look after me.” That would make a nice change... Lots of us made great use of board games during lockdown – and Oscar nominee Riz Ahmed even used one in his marriage proposal. He asked Fatima Farheen Mirza to marry him during a Scrabble game on a picnic.
The Brit Sound of Metal star said of his “corny” stunt: “I stole all the correct letters up and spelled out: ‘Will you marry me?’”
Hopefully Fatima, who wed Riz last year, said it was an illegal move and scored nothing.
She’s a proud mum of three, famed for her charming cheerfulness.
Feet on the seat, elbows on the table... restaurants have barely reopened and proprietors must already be sick of some guests. Madonna forgot her table manners when out for dinner with her “bestie”, celeb agent Maha Dakhil, in LA where they “fed each other’s souls” (and mouths) as rules relax.
But it’s obvious why the singer, in an electric blue suit, was so excited.
After years on a macrobiotic, wholegrain diet in six tiny portions throughout the day, this giant plate of pasta must feel like a party.
But Stacey Solomon is racked with “tremendous guilt” over suffering postnatal depression when she became a mum at 18 to Zachary, now 13.
Stacey, 31, admits: “I have moments with Zachy where I think, ‘Oh, I wish I loved you from the very minute.’
“I’m sure I did, I just didn’t feel it, and I didn’t get it. And it brings me tremendous guilt.”
Stacey had similar moments of feeling “gut-wrenchingly unhappy” and was “uncontrollably sobbing” after the birth of her youngest, Rex, two years ago.
But she was prepared for the “horrendous” experience so found a “comfort” in knowing it would pass. Stacey tells the Mad World podcast: “I will always be a teenage mum from Dagenham. I was the girl on the bus with a baby and everyone was tutting at me – because I looked like a baby with a baby.”
The Loose Women star recently bought her dream country home, and admits she and fiance Joe Swash were in tears when they walked through the front door for the first time.
“I had a baby really young and everyone said my life was over and I’d never be a success. We cried a bit. “Whatever days we get here, it’s just the best ever. We’re so blooming excited.”
She says she finds keeping her positive attitude “less exhausting” than feeling sad or struggling. “I spend less energy that way.”
Steve Parish