That’s Love Life! Dame Esther goes on a TV blind date
SHE’S looking for love again after being a widow for more than a decade.
And it seemed that Dame Esther Rantzen may have found Mr Right after agreeing to go on a blind date with a silver-haired lawyer – until he gave her the most backhanded of compliments.
‘If I may say so, I think for a lady of your advancing years you make splendid company,’ 68-year-old John Wood tells the TV star after they had enjoyed a romantic meal, filmed for Channel 4’s Celebrity First Dates.
‘He was doing so well up till then,’ says Dame Esther after her date, which will be screened on Friday.
Asked about her feelings before the meeting, the That’s Life! star says: ‘It would be quite amusing, wouldn’t it, to fancy someone who fancied me? Falling in love is so wonderful.’
In the programme, the presenter, 75, also talks movingly about her loneliness following the death in 2000 of her husband – TV producer and documentary maker Desmond Wilcox. She says: ‘You find yourself coming home to an empty flat. I have plenty of people to do something with but nobody to do nothing with. There really is a stigma to admitting you are lonely.’
Before meeting Mr Wood, she reveals she is nervous about how her date will react: ‘The worst thing that could happen is that whoever it is sees it’s me and runs. It has happened!’
Viewers will indeed see the look of surprise on Mr Wood’s face when he spots the TV star heading to his table. He says: ‘I thought, “That woman looks extraordinarily like Esther Rantzen.”’