here's where we are all nice to each other...

I'd like to make dinner for everyone. I'd like a decent kitchen and larger apartment to do it in, but it might actually be cool to make you all stand outside except for the line of people winding through my living room and hallway to the kitchen, where I can just hand plates down, and they get passed down the line with everyone taking a bite, and ... like that.

Stelfox.

I just fell in love.

I can even cook for the British, I make decent Yorkshire pudding.

... do people still eat Yorkshire pudding in the UK?

Ahem

*Good things about Chris Barrus*

and if you put us both in the kitchen at the same time, you will all die of food bliss...

I haven't got a drop of alcohol in my system actually, Cozen.

I hope you are ok, N. I am sure you are. < /too pally>

Anyone care for a glass of Pimm's, complete with fresh mint, chunks of cucumber and strawberries in it? I have a stack of Duty Free which needs consuming.......

There's Momus. There's too much Momus.

There's Momus. Welcome back, Momus.

It's maybe part of my ice maiden fixation.

ice maidens = not hilarious

*hugs everyone in the ILXiverse*

p.s.: Someday in the future, when I've gotten to know you lot better and you've gotten to know me better, I'd like to do one of those FAPs. It's be fantastically good.

p.p.s.: CJ, you silly. Me like. Me also like prospect of you reciting telephone directory. Me wish me sounded as good.

JENNIE BOND BOASTS SHE WEARS NO KNICKERS. WAS THAT WHAT SHE DID TO STEAL MY HUSBAND?
AS A YOUNG REPORTER, THE BBC'S ROYAL CORRESPONDENT WAITED IN HER CAR OUTSIDE GRACE KELTZ'S HOUSE . . . THEN WHISKED AWAY HER HUSBAND FOR WEEKENDS OF LOVE, LEAVING A TEARFUL WIFE TO CARE FOR TWO SMALL CHILDREN

THE BBC's royal correspondent, Jennie Bond, is a familiar face on TV with her plummy voice and gushing manner.

Millions of viewers know her as the high-profile, smartly dressed reporter who brings us the latest coverage on royal events from around the world. Some of her colleagues teasingly describe her as 'more royal than Royalty'.

But when Grace Keltz switches on her television set and sees Jennie, she is reminded only of the woman who stole her husband. For Grace is the first wife of Jennie's husband, Jim Keltz, and vividly remembers the first time she met the young and ambitious reporter who had just started on the Richmond Herald, where Jim was chief reporter.

'It was as if an electric shock passed through me,' she says. 'I think I suspected something even then.' Although she and Jim divorced in 1976, Grace still retains her married name . . . and many of the painful memories associated with the traumatic split. As she sips coffee in the lounge of her Victorian terraced house, the attractive blonde struggles to find the words to describe how she feels about Jennie.

She wants to be polite and not sound bitter, but it is not easy because the arrival of 22-year-old Jennie on the scene in 1972 spelt the end of her eightyear marriage.

The 59-year-old radiographer explains: 'Our marriage had been troubled in the past, even before Jennie arrived. I remember the first day I met her.

Jennie had just started on the paper where Jim was chief reporter and it was her first job after university. I was introduced to her when I dropped into the office.

'I asked her where she came from.

She said, "Hertfordshire", and her voice was so plummy I could barely understand her reply. I looked at this attractive blonde, who was so vibrant, and I just got this feeling of "here we go again".

'Jim had been involved with women before, usually younger than him, but the affairs had not come to anything and our marriage had survived.' At the time, Grace and Jim had two young children – Stephen, six, and Danielle, five – and lived in a small flat in Wimbledon, South-West London.

WHENJim started coming home even later than usual and mysteriously smelling of perfume, Grace immediately suspected he was having another affair.

There would be telltale blonde hairs on his jacket, phone calls that suddenly ended when she came into the room and nights when she was forced to go to bed alone, wondering if he would return at all. It was a familiar pattern.

Her fears were confirmed at a wedding that all three of them attended, when for the first time she was struck by the blatant sexual chemistry between her husband and Jennie.

Grace says: 'Jim would come in very late and I could smell Jennie's scent on him. I can't remember what she used, but I know it was very strong.

'Then we went to the wedding of the Richmond Herald editor, and Jennie was there. I remember coming round a corner and seeing her walk deliberately into him, with her bosoms thrust out provocatively. At that moment I knew there was something between them.

'I suppose I hoped it would all blow over, like it had in the past. I didn't want to confront him over her because I had two young children to think of and I didn't want him to leave me.' But the affair intensified over the next few months. Jim spent more and more time with Jennie, leaving Grace to spend lonely nights at home tormented by the knowledge of what they were doing together.

In a few weeks there was a bigger shock – Jim announced he and Jennie were off to spend a weekend together with Jennie's sister, Sue, whose husband had a farm in Hertfordshire. The weekends away became more frequent, with Jim and Jennie going off on the Friday night and returning late on Sunday. By this time Grace was barely seeing her husband, and neither were the children.

She says: 'It was a very painful time.

He and Jennie would go and stay with her sister for weekends, leaving me on my own with the children.

'Jennie would come and collect him in her car and they would drive off.

It was agony knowing he was away with her. I would just walk round Kew Gardens with the children, feeding the ducks and crying, trying to keep myself together for them.

'I don't blame it all on Jennie and I don't know what story Jim told her when they went away for those weekends. I think she blanked off what she was doing to our marriage. You live for the moment when you have an affair.

Jennie was very young. She could not have realised the hurt she was causing or she wouldn't have done it.

'I felt powerless to stop Jim going away with her at weekends. It went on for several months. I didn't dare challenge it because it would cause confrontation. I just told the children he was working,' recalls Grace, who lives in a modest two-bedroom house in South Wimbledon.

Finally, the moment that Grace dreaded arrived. Jim announced he was leaving her for Jennie. The affair had been going on for less than six months.

Grace went cold inside as her husband calmly stood in front of her and told her that he had decided to move into Jennie's flat, which she shared with a couple of friends.

She says: 'It was two weeks before my 30th birthday. I felt a mixture of anger, bitterness and frustration. I had no job, two children to look after, bills to pay and debts from our married life. I was on a treadmill of survival, desperately trying to keep the family together.' SHE adds: 'I found work as a radiographer again, doing shifts around the children's school hours. At first I told them that Jim was away working, then a few weeks later I sat down and told them the truth.' Grace dissolves into tears as the memories come flooding back. To her, telling the children was probably the most painful moment of the marriage breakdown.

Over the years, she has watched Jennie's progress from cub reporter to confident, highflying royal correspondent, never being able to escape her presence. There is always a face on TV, an article in a glossy magazine, the first-person newspaper pieces where Jennie gushes about her married life and career.

But, strangely, there is little detail of how she stole another woman's husband.

'I think Jennie is very imageconscious and aware of her public,' says Grace.

'We are vastly different. My job is one of substance – there is no self-importance because everyone else comes first in medicine. But with Jennie's job it's different.' Grace admits that she has flicked through the pages of Jennie's autobiography, Reporting Royalty. She has a bizarre compulsion to read about her love rival. And she insists it proves her point that Jennie is obsessed with her public image.

She says: 'In Reporting Royalty there is nothing really about the Royals – it's all about her life. She tells all these anecdotes about not wearing knickers and liking stilettoes. It seems to be geared to trying to make her less prim and plummy.' But it was when Grace's son Stephen, now 36, visited his father and stepmother at their luxury home in Muswell Hill, North London, that Jennie showed her true colours.

Stephen, who earns just over £14,000 a year working as a marine biologist in Aberdeen, was stunned when the highly paid royal reporter started grumbling about how little money she had.

Grace said: 'She complained to Stephen that she only got £5,000 for doing the Queen Mum's funeral – that is a third of what he earns in a year. I'm amazed she could be so tactless.' Both Stephen and his sister Danielle, now 35, get on with Jennie and they visit their father and stepmother regularly.

Unlike Jim, Grace has never remarried but is happy with her single lifestyle, seeing friends and working as a radiographer.

Meanwhile, Jennie has cleverly crafted her public image over the ten years she has been in her current BBC post.

In the famous 'knickers anecdote', told in her autobiography, she describes how she climbed a 20ft ladder outside Clarence House for the Queen Mother's 100th birthday and 'wished fervently that I'd remembered to heed my producer's advice and wear knickers'.

She also waxes eloquent about the days when she wore white stilettoes and an ankle chain – revelations which are seemingly calculated to spice up her strait-laced image.

JENNIE belongs to Speakers UK, an organisation that hires out celebrities for after-dinner speeches.

The company boasts that 'for between £2,000 and £20,000 you can secure the right name to attend your event'.

Last October Jennie opened a Jubilee Exhibition at Bath's Museum of Costume, proudly billed as 'Jennie Bond, Royal Correspondent for the BBC', a great coup for a woman who has become almost as familiar a face as the royalty she covers.

A set of first-day cover stamps commemorating Princess Diana is signed by her, with the words 'Jennie Bond BBC TV' scrawled underneath. She agreed to the autograph in return for a £500 donation to the Princess of Wales Fund.

Just a couple of weeks ago she took to the skies in a helicopter to cover the Queen's Golden Jubilee tour around Britain. The cost of the helicopter is estimated to have been £1,000 an hour and comes amid BBC cutbacks on tea, coffee and biscuits to save £1.5 million.

But it seems all the attention has gone to the royal reporter's head.

It was reported that she went into a cafe in Taunton, Somerset, while covering the Queen's walkabout and demanded to be served first.

The headstrong royal correspondent may be used to getting what she wants – whether it is someone else's husband or a cup of tea – but this time she was sent to the back of the queue.

have you seen audition n?

Didn't she also brag that Princess Diana had sent her several pairs of tights as a gift once? The thought of Jennie Bond wearing tights and no knickers is somehow an unpleasant mental image that I need to get out of my head right this minute.

Also: why does Dee want me to read the telephone directory to her? Is she insinuating that my conversational skills are less than scintillating? Bah!

I like nearly everyone on this board. I'm halfway in love with several, and regard quite a few as important friends now.

Also, while we are being nice, I should say that Dee's lengthy post on the creepy misogyny thread was superb.

CJ, you should go check out the "what do you sound like?" thread. Now, please. I only mean the very best in wanting you to recite the telephone directory. Trust me.

Also, while we are being nice, I should say that Dee's lengthy post on the creepy misogyny thread was superb.

*blushes; is unable to say anything here but is profusely thankful*

I've been away on holiday, so I missed your lovely comments. Thank you for being so kind :) I shall go and get a copy of the telephone directory and start recording immediately.....

(Love to all, BTW.)

"we love you"

:)

Ack! I feel soooo objectified.

And I like it :-)

Martin is so affable and easy going and pleasant!

I misread that as "Martin is so affordable ....."

Michel and I obv hang with the same group of men, as most of the guys I've hung with will gladly break open a bottle (or six pack), swig it all over a number of hours and call it a day.

The joy of male bonding continues....

I'm as cheap as they come, CJ.

Also, there are compliments here. I can't imagine how many people I've said complimentary things to here, all well deserved I think, and 'OTM' is maybe the standard "right, right" equivalent.

Keep ya head up.

stelfox, patron saint of keepin it posi