SARAH: ‘WE GOT MARRIED IN THE HOSPITAL!’
Sarah and her hubby are by each other’s side for better or worse
Lego Masters mum Sarah prides herself on staying positive under pressure, but her resolve was truly tested in 2006, when her thenfiance Potu was electrocuted while on the job as a powerline worker – and his life was hanging in the balance.
“The power blew out his entire right side,” Sarah tells Woman’s Day. “He’d had a heart attack and his kidneys and liver were damaged, his lungs had collapsed. He was an absolute mess, so they induced him into a coma.”
Sarah, 46, admits it was “touch and go for a while” as Potu, now 56, recovered in the burns unit at Melbourne’s The Alfred Hospital and she was forced to cancel their wedding in his native Samoa, planned for just 14 days later.
To make matters worse, Sarah was three months pregnant with their second child, after losing their first child – who was born premature – the previous year.
But the optimistic star says she “always had it in the back of my head that he would be OK”. Three weeks later, Potu woke from his coma.
“He told me, ‘It’s OK if you don’t want to marry me... I’m not going to be able to support you and I’m going to be a burden’,” she tells Woman’s Day. “It was devastating for me that he would think that I would leave. So I said to him, ‘We don’t have to get married anywhere fancy, let’s get married in the hospital.’”
So, in October 2006, the couple wed in The Alfred’s chapel. “We had muffins and cake from the hospital cafe,” Sarah shares.
And while Potu is now permanently disabled, cannot work and they lost their home when Sarah had to quit her job to care for him, she says they try to look on the bright side.
“You can sit there and say, ‘This is terrible, life is ending’, or you can basically get on with it,” she says. “We use humour to get through things. It’s made our bond stronger – we couldn’t get any closer than what we are.”
And now their three kids, Maya, 14, Max, nine, and Luna, two, keep asking when their parents will have that island wedding...
“We’ll get there one day!” says Sarah.
‘We couldn’t get any closer than what we are’
As her first-born child, it’s natural that Princess Mary will always feel protective of her son, Prince Christian. And as the 15-year-old royal prepares to enter adulthood, there’s speculation Mary is harbouring more concerns than usual after it was decided he would attend Herlufsholm boarding school – an institution steeped in scandal.
Despite being known as an elite school for wealthy families in Denmark for several hundred years, Herlufsholm has also gained notoriety for its controversial methods in years gone past – with physical punishment, horrific rituals and bullying believed to have happened to its students.
Says a Danish source, “The old Danish boarding schools are known to be quite rough, and there have been rumours of students being tough on each other. It also has a reputation for being a very strict school – the young people must behave, and that can cause trouble and also rebellion amongst some of them.”
Indeed, up until 1993 – when a new headmaster took over
– it was supposedly normal practice for the older students to punish the younger pupils in a number of ways, from physical abuse and enforcing chores, to stripping the sheets from their beds in a fraternitylike initiation.
“A former headmaster has written about these methods
of bullying in a book, and he suspects that some of this is still being practised – without the school knowing,” the source says of Herlufsholm, which is also said to have been the site of a guard being stabbed in 1994 and several reports of rape.
According to a Danish publication, former student Kasper Hansen has said that he has never seen so many unhappy young students as he did during his time at Herlufsholm.
The decision to send young Christian to the boarding school has surprised royal insiders, who say that up until now he has happily been a student at a regular school in the country.
But the decision to change schooling could have
‘The old Danish schools are known to be quite rough’
something to do with his older cousin Prince Nikolai, 21, – the son of 52-year-old Prince Frederik’s brother Joachim – who graduated from Herlufsholm in 2018.
Despite her concerns, Mary, 48, should be able to take some comfort in the knowledge that Nikolai enjoyed his four years at the school.
“Nikolai says he loved it,” says the source.
“A lot of Danish celebrities have also attended the school. Some liked it, with its strict discipline, and some didn’t.’’
She’s kept quiet for years about her personal affairs, but now a defiant Britney Spears is preparing to have her day in court. After requesting her hearing be “expedited”, the pop star, 39, will appear on the stand for the first time to give testimony in her conservatorship case on June 23 – and insiders have revealed what Britney’s expected to expose!
First in the firing line will be her dad Jamie, who has had control of her affairs since her 2008 breakdown. It was recently revealed in the TV documentary The Battle
For Britney that Jamie, 68, claimed his daughter suffers from dementia, which is justification for his ongoing control over her finances. “It’s hard to see them ever reconciling as father and daughter, even once this court case is over,” a source tells Woman’s Day. “Everyone feels so sorry for Britney, because she idolised her dad growing up.”
As for the dementia claims, insiders say they’re “so outlandish” that “it’s blown Jamie’s case apart”.
“She was 26 when all that drama went down and spent the next few years on tour,” the source tells Woman’s Day. “This is a classic and brutal legal play to maintain the conservatorship.”
But Britney has hinted she’s ready to fight. In a feisty Instagram post last week, she called out the recent slew of documentaries about her life.
“So hypocritical… they criticize the media and then do the same thing,” she wrote. “Isn’t this supposed to be a business and society about THE FUTURE.”
And her future is another thing the mum-of-two is expected to address in court, with sources suggesting she will express her wishes to marry boyfriend Sam Asghari, 27, have another baby and perhaps even tour again.
“I have so many trips I’m looking forward to taking this summer and I can’t wait to dance in different studios,” she told her fans recently.
In the meantime, the insider says Britney is leaning on her mum Lynne, 66, ahead of her court showdown. “She’s fighting tooth and nail to free her daughter,” says a source.