Marriage Is For Life

Marriage is for life (says the man who has said 'I do' to Margaret, Jeanette, Lesley, Kathy, Sue, Usha, Wan and now Weng)

At 56 and with eight weddings behind him, Ron Sheppard is Britain's most-married man. He tells Elizabeth Day why he keeps tying the knot - again and again

Ron Sheppard is explaining the key to a successful marriage. "I'm a firm believer in that old saying: 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again'," he says, his eyes blinking earnestly behind a pair of tinted bifocals. "Of course, in my case, I've tried seven times."

Ron, who has earned the dubious accolade of Britain's Most-Married Man at the precocious age of 56, is very much hoping that it will be eighth-time lucky. With seven failed marriages behind him, he is becoming increasingly sick of weddings.

"Oh, I've had enough of all that now," he says. "I know the vows off by heart. None of my family comes any more and they stopped buying me presents after the third one. At my last wedding, you couldn't move for the paparazzi. A local radio DJ from the Isle of Wight even tried to gatecrash it and broadcast it live on air with his mobile phone."

Sadly, Isle of Wight residents were deprived of the chance to eavesdrop on Ron's register office nuptials to Weng, his 27-year-old Filipino bride, last December, but they were able to catch up on the shenanigans of the newly-wed Sheppards during a subsequent round of daytime television appearances. The latest of these, on Channel 5's Trisha chat-show, was recorded last week and Ron is still unhappy about it.

"To be honest, I prefer going on something like This Morning because it's more upper class. On Trisha, I was on with a man who collected a jar of his own belly-button fluff and the audience booed me when I came out." Perhaps the antagonistic crowd had read the sobering findings of last week's YouGov survey, in which nearly 47 per cent of divorcees cited "drifting apart" as the most common reason for their divorces. Ron, who has eight children and six grandchildren, has drifted a lot in his life. "They were all shouting at me and saying that marriage should be for life," Ron goes quiet for a moment. "The thing is, I agree with them."

Tell that to Margaret, whom Ron met while working at Warner's holiday camp on the Isle of Wight and married in 1966. Or to Jeanette, three months pregnant when they met in a Kingston bingo hall and married in 1973. Or to Lesley, whom he married two years later but left when the glitzy allure of a job at a Pontin's holiday camp became too strong. Or to Kathy, only 18 when they married in 1982 and only 22 when they divorced so that Ron could marry Sue in 1986. Or to Usha, a hotel worker from Singapore, or to Thai-born Wan, both of whom Ron married and divorced with striking efficiency within three years.

But marriage, Ron insists, has always been for life. It's just that Ron is an inveterate fan of reincarnation. In his 56 years, he has enjoyed a staggering array of jobs - butcher's assistant, bingo-caller, holiday-camp entertainer, Army recruit, British Rail customer services manager, singer, charity worker, tour manager and self-appointed talent scout - and he seems to have acquired a wife for each change in direction. Could it be that Ron simply doesn't know what he wants?

"No, I've always wanted a marriage like my parents had," says Ron when The Telegraph meets him and his eighth wife in a London hotel on their way back from the Trisha studio to their new home in Malvern, Worcestershire. "They were married for 61 years and always stood by me. My sister, Pauline, is 62 and has been married for 44 years. Every time I get married again, Pauline says to me, 'You never learn do you'."

This time, he insists, he has learnt. He met his present wife in February last year after a crisis of faith, precipitated by the death of his mother and the departure of his seventh wife back to Thailand within three days of each other.

His father had died three years before and, with both parents dead, Ron admitted for the first time to his older sister that he had been sexually abused as a child.

"It was a family friend," says Ron, quietly. "It happened when I was nine, over a period of five years. I think that's partly why I've always sought the company of women rather than men. I didn't want to be alone."

A friend introduced him to a Christian fellowship based in the Philippines. Ron got chatting to Weng, one of the pastor's daughters, over the internet. Weng, a pretty and level-headed care worker, had no idea that she was about to be swept off her feet.

When Ron visited, in May 2004, he promptly fell in love. Within days of their meeting, he bought a white-gold engagement ring ("It's the most expensive of all of them," he says proudly), recorded a CD of himself singing Unchained Melody, by the Righteous Brothers, and bent down on one knee in front of her extended family with the CD playing romantically in the background. Weng accepted.

"I knew all about his past. He was very honest," she says, taking his hand in hers and stroking it affectionately. "Of course, my first thought was that it was unusual for someone to have been married seven times and my father was concerned because divorce is not really permitted in our culture, but as soon as he met Ron, all those fears were banished. He is very funny and such a compassionate guy. He's so romantic."

Ron interjects: "I leave her little notes in the fridge saying, 'I love you'. And sometimes I write it in shaving foam on the bathroom mirror. It's so important to keep the romance going.

"When I met Weng, I felt all these warm feelings that I've never felt before. She's given me a purpose for being here. She's my guardian angel, sent to me from God. I realise now that I've never truly been in love before."

But what is Ron's secret? How can a softly spoken, middle-aged man with a daring taste in geometrically striped jumpers have quite so much sexual charisma?

Ron smiles broadly, displaying an impressive set of large white teeth. "It's just that I'm not very good at saying no. I'm a caring person, I've got a good personality and a good sense of humour and women seem to like that. It's not as if I frogmarch them down the aisle. Women just seem to be attracted to me. And, of course, when I was a Bluecoat at Pontin's, I was like a trophy."

Weng has never seen Ron in his Bluecoat, but she doesn't feel too hard done-by: after all, they spent their honeymoon at Pontin's. "It was very nice," Weng says diplomatically. "But we were the youngest people there."

"We didn't mind though, did we," Ron says, smiling at the memory. "It was the same old Pontin's. Nothing had changed. The doors still didn't fit into the door frames properly. There were still the same old smiles."

Although Ron has been married eight times, there was only ever one true love of his life before Weng, and that was Pontin's.

"Showbusiness is in my blood," he says, showing me a selection of photographs of himself with an array of stars, including Norman Wisdom, Sylvia Sims and Shane Ritchie, the EastEnders actor who is godfather to Ron's daughter from marriage number four. "I'm a born entertainer. I started working at holiday camps when I was 16 and I've never looked back. I make people laugh all the time with my Tommy Steele and Frank Spencer impressions. My autobiography is going to be called Eight Weddings and a Bluecoat."

Ron has, he says, only been unfaithful once in his life (to wife number six, with wife number seven), but has enjoyed a long-standing affair with showbusiness. This cruel mistress seems to have been behind the break-up of almost all his marriages. His marriage to Margaret ended when he gave up a job in the Army to return to Pontin's and become a bingo-caller. His third wife, Lesley, had to endure long periods of Ron touring with his band before he rejoined Pontin's and left her.

His fourth wife, Kathy, who was a canteen assistant at Pontin's, threw him out after he had "a kiss and a cuddle" with a nurse while in hospital for six weeks having treatment for a slipped disc caused by falling off the stage while doing a Norman Wisdom impression.

Like a bad marital penny, the spectre of Norman returned to blight marriage number five, which ended after a respectable 13 years when Ron left to be Mr Wisdom's tour manager.

"The love of showbiz has left me now," says Ron, unconvincingly, "but Weng has a fantastic voice, so I'm trying to get her a record deal."

In between recording Country and Western duets with a view to getting on local radio, Ron, now retired, is kept busy staying in touch with his children and grandchildren. "I've never believed in staying married for the sake of the children," he says, somewhat superfluously. "I don't regret any of my children. I do regret hurting them and it hurts me when they don't stay in touch. I don't know, perhaps they're ashamed."

In spite of the media attention, Ron insists that he is a little ashamed of his title too.

"Being Britain's Most-Married Man is not a record I'm proud of. I wish someone would come along and get married nine times. I won't be marrying again. Weng is the one."

The Sheppards look at each other affectionately. Against all expectations, they genuinely do seem like a couple in love.

Perhaps, this time, the Pontin's Bluecoat really is in mothballs.

Source:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4195719/Marriage-is-for-life-says-the-man-who-has-said-I-do-to-Margaret-Jeanette-Lesley-Kathy-Sue-Usha-Wan-and-now-Weng.html