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Snap! Two lovely women who caught Robin’s eye — now guess which one he married?

LOOKALIKE: Shirley Anne Field, left, and Sue McGibbon in 1985

By ROBIN McGIBBON

I didn’t believe in fate until I met the actress Shirley Anne Field, who has  died, aged 87.


As a teenage reporter on the Kentish Mercury weekly newspaper, in South East London, I was so smitten with a photo of Shirley Anne, in the Daily Mirror, I pasted it on a card and placed it next to my typewriter.


She was beautiful, with long dark hair and laughing eyes – just like the girl I’d dreamed of meeting in the mountains of Switzerland, on a school journey, a few years before.


Fast forward to a Thursday in December, 1974. I’m in the front office of the Lubyanka, about to meet an Express advertising rep to discuss a display ad I was placing in the Property section when, down that impressive winding staircase came a most attractive young woman with long dark hair — a dead ringer for the beauty I’d admired in the Daily Mirror. Her name was Sue Tompsett, and she would become my second wife.


Fast forward another few years, to November 1985, and I’m asked to invite some celebrities of my choice to Paphos, to publicise the opening of the Cypria Maris hotel.


High on my list, of course, was Shirley Anne, who, as luck would have it, was not rehearsing for panto, as many of the other celebs I wanted were. I relished telling Shirley Anne how Sue and I met and she was delighted to pose for a photo.


How odd that she should die on 10 December — the day Sue and I met. If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.


Shirley Anne Field, who has died aged 87, pictured in 2004

Picture: (Yui Mok/PA)


14 December 2023