At odds with romance

Those cynics at William Hill are offering punters the chance to bet on Lembit Opik's marriage prospects.

Lembit and Gabi are presumably on their way to their local bookies to put the housekeeping on their nuptual longevity - William Hill are offering 50/1 that the couple make it to their golden wedding anniversary (Lembit would only be 93 then).

Spokesman Rupert Adams said: "We offered 5/1 that Lembit would get married when he first started dating Gabriela and are hoping to win back some of our loses with these bets."

These are the odds on offer:

4/1 Fail to make it to church
6/1 Marriage to last less than 1 year
25/1 Silver 25 years
50/1 Gold 50 years

Long live the age of romance.

The next Mrs Opik

Hang around long enough and you'll see everything, so they say. Stay in political journalism long enough and you'll get to cover most stories twice.

So congratulations to Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik, who has announced his engagement to Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia (she's the one on Lembit's left).

The engagment was announced, as is traditional in these circumstances, in Hello! magazine

Lembit proposed beside the Trevi Fountain in Rome last week, and the happy couple plan to marry either next year or the year after.

I know readers of this blog will want to know about the rock - apparently it's a Tiffany white platinum diamond from Selfridges.

Hello! say Gabi is dreaming of a "lavish white wedding in a castle".

She told the magazine: "We'd gone to the Trevi Fountain that afternoon and each made a wish
we kept a secret.

"After a romantic dinner in the evening, Lembit got a taxi to take us back to
the fountain, saying he wanted me to see it lit up. There he started talking
about our future together, took a gorgeous little box from his pocket, got down
on one knee and made his proposal.

"When I said 'yes' he started to cry. Tears of joy poured out of his eyes. I
couldn't cry, I was so happy that I just kept smiling and laughing."

Lembit added: "We were euphoric afterwards, walking around the city and then
sipping champagne and chatting away in our hotel suite until the early hours. I
couldn't ask for things to go better than they did."