Hurley's wedding goes pear shaped

Today's papers disclose that Elizabeth Hurley's father-in-law is fuming after being sidelined at her Indian wedding extravaganza. Vinod Nayar was not allowed to take the normal parental role in the ceremony; he was prevented by his son from taking photos at a cricket match, when the various D list celebrities were happy snapping away, and his gift of jewellery was shunned when Hurley wore instead an emerald necklace loaned by Arun's German mother, which his first wife had worn.

I must say I was quite surprised when I saw the Hello! magazine coverage because there were very few pictures of Arun's family. Now we know why. For the sake of their tawdy Hello deal (for which they got less than Wayne Rooney and Coleen) they squeezed out the family and squeezed in the D list, among them Trinny Woodall and Elton John's partner.

Hopefully these latest disclosures will sign the death knell for Hurley and Nayar, and will have a similar effect on their careers as "Cadburygate" did for Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey.

The Trouble with Ulrika.

I've always tried to like Ulrika Jonsson, I really have. At the start she seemed so nice and fresh; a gorgeous young Swedish girl blundering her way through the GMTV weather. But it becomes very difficult to be an Ulrika admirer. The girl is so needy, so self-centred, and her love life has been so relentlessly like car crash TV. Last week she reached a new low. Presenting a documentary about sex addicts, somehow the whole focus of the programme focused on: yes, Ulrika herself. Yes folks, she is a sex addict and that explains everything. Her relationship with her liberal Swedish father was immediately offered up as an explanation, and the "counsellors" went to town with a lot of pyschobabble.

It doesn't take a psychologist to work out that Ulrika has low self-esteem and ties herself to men who are "emotionally unavailable." I read her autobiography a few years ago and cringed at some of her neediness; for example how she threw herself on the floor screaming when one man was leaving her. I came away with the feeling that Ulrika would make a terrible girlfriend. She probably doesn't see other women as allies. She's one of those women who always has to come out on top, always get the man and always look better than the rest. When she presented a tawdy TV show about successful women competing to win the heart of a bachelor, what happened? Ulrika proved she was the best catch, not the other women, and walked off into the sunset with him. They even got married for a time.

Then there was Sven, the England coach, and the powerful image (thanks Ulrika) of his built-up shoes outside her door. And let's not forget the footballer and savage Stan Colleymore who apparently punched her in public.

Ulrika's now at a very difficult time career-wise. She didn't successfully progress to "serious woman TV presenter" so she's now in the holding pen of former glamour presenters who fight amongst themselves for the few BBC3 and 5 crumbs available (Zoe Ball, Carol Smilie, Anthea Turner, soon Davina McCall). And she isn't ageing well. Too much sun exposure, dieting and emotional turmoil have left her looking haggard. She faces the wilderness for a few years until she can come back as a wise and well preserved older woman and present travel and wildlife shows on daytime TV, like Angela Rippon and Selina Scott.

The only sound advice from the sex addicts experts (whose therapy involves you confiding in horses) was that Ulrika should be celibate for a year. Her horror at this suggested it's not an option she's going to take up, but I think it would do wonders for her career. She could, for starters, write a book about it.