How Spartan Francois got fiancee jumping for joy...

FORMER defence minister Mark Francois, who once declared, ‘I was in the Army — I wasn’t trained to lose’, has won the heart of a mayor almost two decades his junior.

The divorced Brexiteer MP and self-styled ‘Spartan’, 56, has got engaged to radiographer Olivia Sanders (left), 38, the mayor of Brentwood, whose family own Hutton Hall, a stately home which has its own moat.

Francois got down on bended knee on New Year’s Eve during a holiday in the Cotswolds.

He tells me: ‘We are both delighted and looking forward to planning our wedding for later this year.’

‘We’re all thrilled,’ Olivia’s sister, Francesca Freeman, adds. ‘They’re a wonderful couple.’