Katy Guest: Love all! A-List romance
Which celebrity couples are expected to tie the knot this year?Whose relationship is on the rocks? Who will stay together?
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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
For those of a romantic bent, 2007 has been a tough old year. Every time we open a paper, another match made in heaven seems to have come crashing down to earth. Anne Robinson and John Penrose quietly went their separate ways after 27 years of marriage. Kylie and Olivier broke up. Ziggy and Chanelle spent the summer and autumn performing an excruciating and elaborate split. Oh, and Paul McCartney and Heather Mills are still arguing over exactly how many millions she should get from their divorce. This was not one of those Christmases when love was all around. In fact, it has begun to seem as though no couple, however made for each other, can make it. Dammit, even Chantelle and Preston ended in divorce.
So will 2008 be any better? It hasn't got off to an auspicious start. One Couple of the Year starts it off in prison. Another in their pants. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that some are bound to end in Splitsville. But, with any luck, some optimistic souls will defy the statistics and embark on Relationships in Celeb Land. Who will be the lucky ones?
Sienna Miller and Rhys Ifans started the year as "just good friends" and continued to maintain that was all they were in the face of all the evidence. Now they have spent Christmas together and he is said to be working on a poem, in Welsh, to celebrate her 26th birthday. Hopefully she understands that "cariad" is not a peculiar species of beetle native to Pembrokeshire and will be won over by the verse. The pair are 4/1 to announce the first celebrity wedding of 2008.
Blake Fielder Civil begins 2008 at Her Majesty's pleasure. His wife, Amy Winehouse, was arrested on 18 December in connection with the case about his allegedly perverting the course of justice, and a recent arrest in Norway for possession of marijuana may yet come back to haunt them. Many of Winehouse's fans including her parents think that prison is the best place for her husband, and hope she will pull herself together while he is away. However, she has lately been visited by Pete Doherty, who makes Blake look like a dream son-in-law.
Kate Moss and Pete Doherty spent 2007 breaking up, getting back together, hiding in hotel rooms, declaring their undying love through the pages of red-top newspapers and generally behaving like Sid and Nancy, if Sid were a dirt-streaked wannabe and Nancy had a Croydon accent. They are currently Not Together, but if 2008 doesn't see another temporary rapprochement we'll eat Pete's pork pie hat. It could end happily, with a Parky comeback interview revealing that Pete wears Kate's Topshop range thongs... but we doubt it.
More than 80 per cent of British people think that Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton would be a great addition to the Royal Family an addition that will surely be announced in the new year. Then again, a majority of British people thought that Michelle McManus was the best person to win Pop Idol 2003, and look what happened to that. After a short-lived split in 2007, it seems the royal couple cannot bear to be apart despite the paparazzi, the criticism and the in-laws that come with her role. That must be love.
It would be the celebration of a lifetime for romantics, royalists and Hello! magazine: a royal double wedding in 2008. Prince Harry and his Zimbabwean girlfriend Chelsy Davy also had a brief break-up in 2007, when she became fed up with his partying and with the weather in Leeds, where she was studying. Despite her coming under fire for the stupidity of dissing God's own county, they appear to have forgiven each other and are now back on track. Better get the reception room booked at Boujis.
Posh and Becks defied all the odds and ended 2007 even stronger than they started it. A move to LA saw her beginning to conquer America, and his credit cards stretched to the max. She even promised, in a documentary about the move, to pout less and try to look more cheerful. At the end of the year, he showed the world just what she has to be cheerful about when he appeared in an ad for Armani underwear wearing nothing but the abbreviated lingerie, a banana and two hard-boiled eggs.
It has been a rocky year, however, for childhood sweethearts Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin. Just when it seemed that all was well in paradise and the Auld Slapper incident was all but forgotten, he went to that Manchester United Christmas party and ended up getting his baubles kicked by the missus. Now that Coleen is raking in her own millions from advertising deals and magazine columns, she no longer needs the monkey-faced footballer to keep her in giant sunglasses he should worry.
At least Coleen is likely to leave Wayne with a roof over his head if they do split. Meanwhile, Heather Mills and Paul McCartney have spent all year arguing over who gets what from his multimillion-pound fortune, and 2008 promises to offer more of the same. Things took a turn for the worse when she appeared on daytime TV claiming to have been treated "worse than a paedophile". He is working his way through America's eligible singletons, but wedding bells are unlikely to follow he's old, not mad.
The surprise romance of the year happened on ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, when former EastEnder Marc Bannerman fell for Welsh musician Cerys Matthews. Not that it was a surprise to anyone who has ever seen a reality TV programme before just to Bannerman's fiance, Sarah, who found herself dumped on telly. The critics have been silenced, though, as the lovers have now been together for nearly a month. That's a serious commitment, in celebrity years.
It goes to show that you can't predict who'll fall for whom in celeb land. However, several factors remain constant: Russell Brand is always up for a bit of nookie, despite trying and failing to conquer his "sex addiction". And the Spears family will continue to shock. Perhaps Russell might get together with Britney's 16-year-old sister Jamie Lynn, who is pregnant with her first child. She'll need a new boyfriend when her current one goes to prison the age of consent in her home state of Louisiana is 17. Oops!
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