MISTER BLOWBY » »
He spent 45mins on blow drying his hair & grooming Scared of water... but he’d eat kangaroo testicles Why cosmic ordering led to end of our relationship
NOEL’S EX TELLS OF HOPE FOR TV
humour and intellect. “He always had this twinkle in his eyes,” she recalls. “That was the draw for me. “He was cheeky, which was lovely. It wasn’t anything he said – it was a look. He’d get you to stare back. “He hooked you in with a look.” Marjan didn’t recognise Noel when he started to woo her, after first asking her boss if she was single. “Because I’d lived in the States for a long time, it didn’t click immediately. Charmer Noel hooked Marjan Then I realised it was Noel from Multicoloured Swap Shop. When I was a kid I watched that.
“He liked to kiss me in public. That was what was so reassuring about him,” she says. “When I hadn’t seen him for a while he’d always give me the most neat smile and a tender kiss.
“He was always so excited to see me and made me feel so special.”
Marjan would go on to play a pivotal role in one of the most crucial decisions of Noel’s life.
He was in the wilderness at the time after BBC’S Noel’s House Party ended.
But while they were together he was offered two new roles on Channel 4 – presenting Countdown or a then unknown show, Deal or No Deal.
The latter was a huge risk. Even though it was known in Europe, it had not yet reached the UK. But Noel brought miniature boxes of the game home to test it out – and Marjan knew where his fate lay. “We sat down and played a mock-up version of Deal or No Deal,” she recalls. “Noel brought boxes in and we opened them one by one. I thought it was really cool.
“I was convinced it was the right choice. I told him he’d be crossing all age groups, while if he went to Countdown he was going to be an old man.
LIMELIGHT
“He went for it and look what happened – it’s what brought him back into the limelight.”
Marjan admits she was so in love with Noel that she wanted to marry him. But, in the end, she says his fascination with cosmic ordering – a system of positive thinking – drove a wedge between
them. Working on his book Positively Happy: Cosmic Ways To Change Your Life he became friends with his ghostwriter, who Marjan says boosted his ego and opened his mind to more wacky theories.
“We were four or five months into the relationship – the more she came into his life, the more I got pushed out.
“There was jealousy on my part and I kept feeling ousted. They were by the pool playing games and there was no room for me. I kept getting excluded.
“Noel’s obsession with the cosmic order developed. At that point he was rediscovering who he was. He wanted to try to go to another level.
“I know he’s quite religious in his upbringing. But he was looking for the other side – the spiritual side.”
Marjan decided to end their relationship. “Once the fame came