Ulrika: My blind dates
TV star says that being single at 52 feels ‘weird’
ULRIKA JONSSON has revealed she has been on a blind date because the idea of being single at 52 feels “weird and wrong”.
The TV star split from her third husband Brian Monet after 11 years of marriage in April. She said they had sex just once in eight years.
Ulrika is now so desperate to find love again, she has even resorted to going on blind dates.
“Actually, I have decided that I want to be in a relationship and that is what I want,” she confesses.
“We [Brian and her] made a great team for parenting but I think we got lost in the children and the dogs and obligations and when I opened up to one friend about my marriage breaking down she said to me, ‘Oh Ulrika you must have been so lonely’.
“It had never occurred to me that I was lonely because I was never alone.”
Taking part in the first ever celebrity special of First Dates Hotel, in aid of the Stand Up To Cancer campaign, Ulrika embarks on a blind date with 48-year-old divorcee Paul, from Bristol.
And she admits on the show that dating again is a daunting prospect. “The thing is I have not been on a date for like 100 years,” she says. “I was together with someone for 13 years so this is a real big deal. The whole idea of being single at 52 feels a bit weird and wrong.”
She adds: “It’s so bizarre to think about having one more shot at love because I just haven’t felt in that mindset at all.
“But I am a person who loves and is not scared of commitment and I am all in and it’s better to have lived and loved than not to have loved at all.
“I don’t have a type but I love sarcasm and I love people taking the **** , so I love funny, and it’s been missing. The last time I laughed was probably about 2005.”
Paul, who has been single for the past eight years, reveals that his ideal woman is a blonde bombshell who is sexy and sassy. However, their date doesn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts when he tells Ulrika that he spends quite a bit of time in Bristol and Portugal – and she is red-faced when she mishears Portugal for Borstal.
But over a romantic meal she eventually opens up to him and reveals that the reason for her chaotic love life is partly due to her late father Beau.
“He was hilarious and he was a practical joker. I was 27 when he died, very suddenly,” she says.
“He was very romantic, my dad, and he fell in love very easily and I think I was probably like that.”
Ulrika bursts into fits of giggles when Paul reveals how he once posted a banana sandwich through a date’s letter box.
She reveals: “I am genuinely going to wet myself. I haven’t laughed so much in such a long time that I can actually feel some abdominal muscles aching.”
At the end of their date, she says to Paul: “I have laughed so much tonight. You are funny and you are more amazing then you think you are.”
● Celebrity First Dates Hotel for SU2C, Thursday, 9pm, Channel 4