IT MUST BE LOVE
A LOVESTRUCK boyfriend spent £200 on raffle tickets to set up a fairytale marriage proposal to his sweetheart at a Paolo Nutini gig.
Jonty Marnoch beat the odds to get himself and his girlfriend Sarah Aire into an intimate record shop performance by his idol.
Superstar Paolo then helped Jonty seal the deal by teeing up the moment for him to go down on one knee during a specially choreographed song.
The crowd of just 60 superfans parted during Paolo’s rendition of Better Man at Feel The Groove shop in his home town, Paisley, last Thursday as Jonty, 36, made the proposal.
After Sarah, 35, said “Yes”, Paolo then jokingly demanded that he should be best man at the wedding.
Dental nurse Sarah, from Glasgow, said: “I was ecstatic when Jonathan told me he’d won the raffle. I was right up at the front at the gig when I realised what was happening. I couldn’t believe it. There couldn’t have been a better way to propose and we were blown away by Paolo taking a role in the whole thing. I’m still buzzing.”
Jonty, an IT expert from Blairgowrie, Perthshire, hatched the plan after Paolo announced he would do the record store gig as a warm-up for his main concert at Paisley Abbey the following day.
He said: “Paolo said he’d do the gig to support Feel The Groove, the record shop in Paisley that replaced Apollo, where he used to buy records. They were giving one raffle ticket for every fiver you spent, so I wanted to get a decent chance.
“I’d already tried and failed to get tickets for Paisley Abbey so I was determined to give it a good shot.
“I handed over £200 for a bunch of CDs, which gave me 40 raffle tickets. I wasn’t