Brother and sis who wed siblings celebrate 50 years
RETURNING home to South Africa to celebrate her 80th birthday on February 18, Great British Bake Off’s Prue Leith reports the pressure is on over at her eponymous chefs’ academy in Pretoria.
“We’re going to have a competition at the academy. Everybody’s submitting their birthday cake recipes,” enthuses Cape Town-born Prue, pictured.
“The best one is going to be chosen and then I’m going to eat it, I can tell you!”
Surely Prue’s famously unforgiving fellow judge Paul Hollywood should be flown over to up the ante?
HE may be firmly established as one of the nation’s best-known comedy performers, but Rob Brydon isn’t always made to feel like a household name.
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The 82-year-old now insists: “I’m a single woman because I don’t have time not to be single.”
INTRODUCED as “our greatest living legend” before a celebrity golf game in California this week, Clint Eastwood, 89, responded: “I like the living part.”
TWO loving couples are about to hold a double golden wedding celebration – with the most romantic of twists.
Sean Hartney, 22, was swept away by tradition when Sue Pitcher, 19, made a leap year proposal on February 29, 1968 after being his girlfriend for only five weeks.
He invited his sister Jean to the engagement party while Sue invited her brother Bob.
You’ve guessed it.Their siblings then fell in love. But it did not stop there.
The couples married on the same day in May 1970 – with separate ceremonies 11 miles apart, with a coach being used to ferry guests between the venues.
And the couples have since celebrated every one of their anniversaries together, including a trip to Thailand for their silver weddings.
For this year’s landmark 50 years, they are off to New York.
While Sue, now 69, from London, and Sean, now 72, from Cork, Ireland, enjoyed a whirlwind romance, it took Bob until June 1969 to secure a first date with Jean, who like him was 21.
He recalls: “We went to The Boathouse at Kew in south-west London. You paid three bob, 50p today, and had chicken in a basket.” Jean added: “He proposed one month later on a fishing trip”
But the wedding day was far from straightforward.
The Hartneys’ ceremony was at a Church of England church in East Acton, west London, at 1pm while the Pitchers wed at a Catholic church in East Dulwich, south-east London, at 4pm.” A joint reception made things easier, with the couples having two wedding cakes – one square one round – as well as separate first dances.
Bob, now 71, who still works in the building industry, and Jean live in Woosehill, Berks, and have one son, 46, and three grandchildren.The Hartneys, both retired and living five miles away at Bracknell, have one son, 46, and a daughter, 48, plus three grandchildren.
Bob has the best answer to making a marriage work, saying: “Jean is my drinking partner.”
Sean added: “We’ve had lots of good times and not many sad times. And it’s not finished yet.”