I didn’t have a ring, but the moment was right: When Shane Warne proposed to Elizabeth Hurley – Times of India
Remembering Warne, here’s an excerpt from his autobiography ‘No Spin’ where he shared how he met and fell in love with actress Elizabeth Hurley. The excerpt is published with permission from Penguin Random House.
‘No Spin’ by Shane Warne
Photograph
Elizabeth
I first met Elizabeth at Goodwood in England. I don’t often go to the races, aside from the huge spring carnival in Melbourne that I take Jackson to most years nowadays. If I’m going to have a punt, it will more likely be on the roulette and blackjack tables or in a poker school. I’ve only been to the horses once or twice in the UK, so I think we can call it fate that one Elizabeth Hurley was in the same private box as me at Goodwood in the English summer of 2010. We just clicked straight away – lots of laughs, just a natural chemistry, I guess. She was still married, although in the process of breaking up with her husband, Arun Nayar. I was giving it another go with Simone, so it wasn’t anything more than one of those first-up things most people have when they meet and like each other.
We swapped numbers, kept in touch and met in a bar in London a few weeks later. There was more than just a connection this time, there was a sense of excitement. You meet a lot of people in your life, anywhere from the racecourse to the supermarket really, but only very occasionally do you immediately feel on the same wave length with someone completely new.
It’s pretty hard to say what brought it on – don’t the French say a certain Je ne sais quoi – but pretty quickly we both knew there was something special going on, something real. We had a drink, then dinner, and that was that. Nothing else happened – we were both in a situation that needed resolving first.
I went back to Australia, but we kept texting and even tweeted, which of course was public and aroused suspicion. I went with some thing like, ‘Looking forward to dinner next time, hope you’ll be cooking at home though’; she replied with ‘Yes, sure will, can’t wait to see you!’ type thing. Pretty lightweight. Suddenly, Woman’s Day came out with a front-page picture of the two of us at Goodwood and the headline ‘In Your Dreams, Warney’. The article with it included the tweet. It was funny in a way – if only they knew. We just giggled and moved on.
Simone and I went to Topolino’s in St Kilda and I said to her, ‘Listen, I think . . .’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘We knew on the first night we got back together, didn’t we?’
‘I guess we did,’ I replied.
We agreed it was over, for good this time. ‘So what are we going to do?’ I asked. ‘How do we tell the kids again?’
She said, ‘Oh my God, we can’t tell the kids again. Not right now, anyway. The summer is starting soon, and you’ll be all over the place commentating. Let’s get through Christmas and the school holidays and tell the kids before they go back to school.’
Good plan, I said. Which was exactly what we did.
Later in the year, I was back in the UK to film some interviews for my new TV show, Warnie – more about that in the next chapter – and a couple of days later I met Elizabeth at a function that she’d invited me to. About 20 of us sat at a long table but, by now, we were struggling to hold back. As both of us were now single, we left early, kissing in public, and she came back to the Bentley hotel where I was staying.
As we entered the room at about 1 am, the fire alarm went off. We both thought, ‘This is a bit weird,’ so we looked out the window onto the street and didn’t see a thing going on. We figured someone had lit a cigarette in their room or something and then, wow, the next thing we knew there was banging on the door and shouts of ‘Evacuate, evacuate!’ The sirens were going nuts, people were running all over the joint and we ended up outside on the street. We waited a while but not much was happening, so we disappeared up a side street and started kissing again. Anyway, Elizabeth left soon after this drama and that was sort of it.
During the next few days, I was busy recording interviews for the show and the best part of a week passed before I flew home.
I will never, ever forget landing in Melbourne. There were a thousand messages, some of which were from Elizabeth – call me, call me. The front page of the News of the World had a double-page spread on us leaving the party, hugging, kissing, standing outside the hotel in the middle of the night, up the side alley, the lot. We reckon that someone who saw us at the party tipped off the press and then the hotel, and someone there set up the fire-alarm thing. Pretty easy to fix with a wad of cash!
Now, remember, Simone and I hadn’t told the kids we’d split up and although Elizabeth and her husband had agreed to separate, she was still technically married. The press put two and two together and made five: ‘Cheating Warne, again’, ‘Hurley cheats on husband’ type stuff, which wasn’t true, but they could be excused for thinking it was. The moral of the story is: deal with things instantly, no matter how hard it is to do.
The kids were 13, 11 and eight, so they knew enough about what was going on in the world. Most importantly, they thought their dad and mum were together. They were angry, which was fair enough. We should have told them straight away. In trying to protect them, we let them down. Simone and I sat down with them and ran through everything, this time coming completely clean, and in my case, that included Elizabeth. Summer, the youngest, and I had watched the Austin Powers film together, which made us cry with laughter, so, she had ‘met’ Elizabeth in that movie.
‘Is that really her, Dad?’ she asked.
‘It is, Summer, it is.’
Brooke wanted detail. Is this serious and, if so, what happens next?
I said, ‘Yes, I think so, but we live on opposite sides of the world and we can’t be sure how it’ll pan out. We really like each other and feel we can be very happy together.’
Jackson kind of shrugged his shoulders, as if the world was passing him by in its usual confusing way. Hidden deep down was his belief that I’d hurt his mum again. All three of them thought that. Their blame fell on me. I could sense it and understand it.
Of the many things I’ve learnt about my children, their resilience and loyalty stand out. When I introduced them to Elizabeth, it was the first time they’d met any girl I had been with since either of the break-ups with Simone. The reason was simple. I didn’t want the kids exposed to anyone unless my relationship with that person was serious. Contrary to the rubbish often reported in the media, EH was the first serious relationship I had with anyone outside of Simone. Their attitude to meeting her was fantastic – open, warm, welcoming and natural. Thanks, guys, I’ll never forget that…
…In the European summer of 2011, James Packer invited us to his boat in Spain and – wait for this – sent his private plane to New York to pick us up. Well, what are mates for! We arrived, and the boat, the Arctic P, was exactly as I remembered it from previous visits – just out of this world. To be on that boat – ship, really – is just the greatest experience and Elizabeth loved it.
We had a few drinks on deck, and a few more, cranked up the music and, as we started to dance the night away, I began to think of proposing right there and then. After 18 months together and completely on impulse in the middle of a dance, I grabbed Elizabeth, dropped to one knee and said, ‘I’m not sure about you, but I’ve never got along with any woman as well as I get along with you. I’m madly in love with you. Our kids get along great. How would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?’
Without hesitation, she replied, ‘Of course I would, silly, I’m madly in love with you too. I feel exactly the same. I’ve never got on better with anyone than I do with you either.’
So I shouted, ‘Yessss!’
‘Pack’ was on deck too. He turned around and said, ‘You haven’t, have you? You just haven’t . . . have you?’
‘Errrr, yep,’ I said, ‘and, guess what, you’re the first to know, James!’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ he said, and on we partied.
I didn’t have a ring, nothing, but the moment was right. The Warne impulse was in action. So we danced and sang and drank and blew the speakers before we crashed too.
READ MORE: Did you know that legendary Australian cricketer Shane Warne was also an author?
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