CALENDAR GIRLS

Their story inspired the hit film about stripping members of the WI. Now the widow whose loss started it all has found new love with her husband’s best friend... and marries him today

WHEN Angela Baker walks down the aisle at noon today in her smart cream suit, a feather decoration in her neatly bobbed hair, she’ll have the biggest grin on her face. Family and friends, including the original Calendar Girls, packed into the little village church, will be singing: ‘ Give me joy in my heart.’ And it will be a wonder if anyone can manage not to cry.

Then, as they leave the church, her tiny bridesmaids in their pretty pink dresses will scatter blood red rose petals taken from the bush she planted in memory of her first husband, John.

For Angela is one of the best-known widows in Britain. And there can be few who won’t feel just a little happier to learn that after much sadness she’s found love again.

Since John’s untimely death seven years ago, Angela has devoted herself to honouring his memory with an inimitable mixture of cheeky fun and sheer Northern grit.

First came the infamous tongue- in- cheek Women’s Institute calendar, in which Angela and her WI friends posed in the nude. One was baking, one was knitting, another watering plants. And at the piano as Miss February was Angela.

It later inspired the hit film Calendar Girls, with Julie Walters capturing every detail of Angela’s pain and inspirational courage.

Angela never imagined she would find anyone to take 54-year- old John’s place. Nor for many years did she want to. But, in a fairytale ending, she has found love with one of her husband’s oldest friends, the Rev Charles Knowles.

‘ I haven’t been able to sleep for days. I’m so excited,’ says Angela. ‘I still can’t quite believe it’s happening.

‘John was a hard act to follow, but I feel no disloyalty. John is part of both our lives — in fact, Charles met him before I did.’

Angela, John and Charles met at Sheffield University in 1962. Angela was a secretary at the travel bureau of the students’ union and fell in love with John, a sociology student, when he came in to book a holiday.

‘It was instant,’ Angela laughs. ‘ John was good looking, with green eyes. I don’t remember a single day when he didn’t make me laugh. I just knew we were going to be together for ever.’

THEY married in September 1966 when Angela was 21. Rachel was born in 1969, followed by Matthew in 1971. Angela worked part time first as a secretary, then as a registrar conducting marriages. Life revolved around the children and the Church. John, an assistant national park officer, was a committed Methodist and the couple sang in the church choir.

Charles’s life, meanwhile, took a different path. Following a longheld vocation, he was ordained in 1969 and has been vicar of the busy parish of St Mary Magdalen, in Coventry, for the past 11 years.

Committed to the demands of the job, he has had several relationships, but has never married, deciding that it would take a very special woman to share her man with an entire congregation.

‘ I’ve seen priests struggling to give enough time to their families and I knew that wouldn’t be right for me,’ he says. ‘My life was the Church and I don’t have a single regret. But now, I realise just how much I was missing; how I was lonely on Sunday evenings when everyone had gone home.’

The gang of university friends always sent Christmas cards and in 1990 attended a 25- year reunion in Sheffield to talk over old times.

Then in 1998 John, who had never had a day off work, was diagnosed with Aggressive NonHodgkins Lymphoma, a form of leukaemia, and Angela’s world collapsed.

To bolster his spirits and to occupy her mind, Angela and her friend Tricia Stewart cooked up the now infamous idea of the nude calendar featuring their pals from Rylstone Women’s Institute.

Sadly, John died in July, 1998, just five months after being diagnosed. But the friends pressed on and the calendar came out in April 1999, with proceeds going to the Leukaemia Research Fund.

Soon Angela found herself caught up on a giddy rollercoaster as the WI girls raced around the world, being feted by everyone from Prince Charles to Martha Stewart. But, just like the Rev Knowles, she found herself going home to an empty house.

‘It was exciting and doing something positive for John was wonderfully therapeutic,’ says Angela. ‘ But it didn’t fill the gaping void. I was doing things I’d never dreamed of — from speaking to a hall of 400 people to buying a new car. John had taken charge of everything from paying bills to organising holidays.

‘I knew he’d be proud of me. But it just made me miss him all the more. I’d go home at the end of the day and there was no one to talk to. There’s nothing lonelier than sticking a meal for one in the microwave. I gave up my job as a registrar — I was just too sad to get involved with anyone else’s deaths.’

CHARLES wrote a touching letter to Angela when John died. He wrote again when he learnt of the calendar, asking for ten copies to sell to friends. ‘I thought it was a wonderful thing to do — typical of her gutsy attitude and I knew John would be proud of her.

‘I didn’t up put the calendar in my study — that might have distracted visitors. But I’d look at it, remember John and smile.’

Charles saw the film and wept. ‘ As a vicar, I’m used to comforting the bereaved, but seeing my friend dying of cancer on screen was terrible,’ he says softly. Back home he wrote instantly to Angela with a postscript: ‘I hope to see you at another reunion if not before.’

Even now, Charles isn’t quite sure what inspired that line or what response he expected. But Angela couldn’t get the words

out of her head. By now John had been dead for five years.

‘ It may sound silly,’ she says. ‘ But I believe that John was behind it. I’m convinced he brought Charles and me together when I was ready. I still missed him, but I’d begun to realise that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.’ A few weeks later, in January 2004, Angela was invited to attend a ball in Preston for the Leukaemia Research Fund.

‘I wasn’t looking forward to it,’ she says. ‘ All the other Calendar Girls would be there with their husbands. I love them to bits and knew they would fuss over me and ask me to dance — but it just hammered home the loneliness.

‘I didn’t know a single bachelor — then I remembered Charles. My daughter Rachel jumped at the idea and suggested we e-mail him — then if he said no it would be less awkward. I’d never asked anyone out in my life. I’d not been single since I was 20, and now I was 58.’ But Charles replied instantly, saying he would be delighted.

Soon the couple were chatting every week on the phone. Then, in February last year, a month before the ball, Angela was invited to speak to 400 women near Charles’s home in the Midlands. She suggested they have a coffee afterwards.

‘I was waiting in the foyer when I saw this gorgeous man in a dog collar roar up and abandon his car on double yellow lines,’ she recalls. ‘I ran out. The first words that popped out of my mouth were: “ Are vicars allowed to do that?”

‘ Charles broke into a grin. I looked up into his twinkly brown eyes and felt instantly right.’

Charles meanwhile was equally smitten. ‘I’d been nervous — after all we hadn’t chatted properly in 40 years — but we just clicked. Angela’s always been beautiful, but she’s developed presence and charisma. She lights up a room.’

At the ball the following month nothing seemed more natural than for Angela to melt into Charles’s arms as they danced.

Charles says: ‘ John is a huge part of Angela’s life. If we didn’t feel easy discussing him, it would be awkward. But I knew him, too.’

Last March, a year after their first date, Charles proposed. ‘He gave me an Easter Egg,’ she recalls. ‘I picked it up and saw a thread running under it. Charles said: “ This gift has strings attached.”

‘Sure enough — at the end of the string was a diamond ring.When I’d finally calmed down, I insisted he get down on one knee and ask me properly. Then we opened a bottle of champagne and rang my children, then my mother, then the Calendar Girls.’

Their happiness is infectious. Angela received more than 400 letters from wellwishers and Julie Walters sent the couple tickets to see her in Acorn Antiques and insisted on a celebratory drink in her dressing room.

In June, on what would have been John’s 61st birthday, Charles accompanied Angela to Clarence House to meet the Prince of Wales to celebrate hitting the £1million mark in their fundraising. Now she intends to divide her time between her home in Yorkshire and Charles’s vicarage in Coventry. ‘I’m going to be a longdistance commuter,’ she laughs. ‘ Thank heavens I’ve got my old age rail pass.

‘When I married John I thought it would be for ever. Now I’m older, I understand the importance of seizing the moment. I feared the joy had gone out of my life for ever. To feel loved again is wonderful.’