At last! Carol Thatcher and her Marco wed in Vegas

JENNIFER Lopez and Ben Affleck did it. So did Chris evans and Billie Piper. And now, i can reveal, so too has i’m A Celebrity winner — and only daughter of Margaret Thatcher — 70-year-old Carol Thatcher.

Showing a talent for pulling off a surprise which would surely have startled her mother, Carol has married in Las Vegas. Her husband is Marco Grass, the mop-haired Swiss skiing instructor Carol met in 1992. Marco is the man friends long hoped she’d wed while fearing she might never have her big day.

Carol evidently shared those worries. On one of the few occasions she talked publicly about Marco — 16 years her junior — she said: ‘One day i’m sure he’ll vanish into the distance with someone younger and prettier.’

it was a rather poignant prediction by someone whose youthful love affair with Jonathan Aitken, then a rising star in the Tory Party, ended in heartache when he turned his attention elsewhere. He was the man ‘who made Carol cry’, according to her mother Margaret.

But some friends felt Carol’s comment was also realistic. That wasn’t because of hostility towards Marco, a charming man from a family of hoteliers. it was because they believed the age difference would become more significant. Carol and Marco, however, have proved them wrong.

After meeting in Switzerland, the couple lived in Carol’s riverside flat in fulham, West London. But Marco was soon a guest in Chester Square, in Belgravia, where Lady Thatcher and husband Denis spent their final years.

Sir Denis, to whom Carol was devoted, advised Marco to follow his lead and avoid the limelight. for her part, Carol remains as discreet — and playful — as ever. Declining to comment further on their wedding, she says it was ‘years’ ago. if so, it would seem that only now is she content to acknowledge it.