British Baronet Seeks Young Wife, Those ‘Past the Sell-By Date’ Need Not Apply
Are we entirely sure that we did not actually travel back in time this week? Did anyone step into a Tardis or screw around with a Time-Turner? Did Superman spin the world backwards to save Lois Lane? Because first we saw a woman who thought we should be teaching our daughters to try to marry rich men, as though it were 1917, and today we’ve got a 70-year-old British baronet advertising for a young wife who can produce a male heir, so we cannot possibly still be in 2017, can we?
Actually, does anyone have contact info for that mother? We should introduce these two. He probably wouldn’t be interested in her–a woman in her 40s is probably past this 70-year-old’s “sell-by date”””but he might be interested in one of her teenage daughters. Screw blogging, let’s start a matchmaking service.
Sir Benjamin Slade, shameless 7th Baronet, right-wing businessman and self-publicist, actually spoke to the Telegraph about how he’s looking for a fit young woman to marry so she can help him run his two houses and bear a male heir. He’s been at this for a while, though, with no babies to show for it.
Slade was recently in a relationship with a 50-year-old businesswoman, but he broke up with her because at 50 she was too old to have children. He’s been actively on the market for a woman of childbearing age since at least 2013. (The 50-year-old girlfriend appears to have traded Slade in for a 46-year-old finance guy whose grandfather was a baronet.)
”I am interviewing hard. I have had a few proposals, but sometimes the women are past their sell-by date and have been over the guns a few times,” said Slade, who somehow has not managed to sweep some young thing off her feet with sweet words like those.
“They have to be fit – I have two castles. I am like a feudal prince when it comes to throwing parties,” Slade says, but “fit” means “hot” in British slang and I can’t tell if he means that she must be physically fit enough to be able to manage the houses, or if he means she should be hot because he has two castles. He probably means a little bit of both.
”I am also on the Genghis Khan diet, which is recommended for young lotharios and involves eating sweet potato, sunflower seeds and horny goat weed,” said Slade. ”It was recommended by my French nephew, who is 70 and hasn’t a single grey hair. And Genghis had 2,000 children.”
In 2013 Slade was worth about $25 million, and he does own two castles, which he bought. He was on a reality TV show that aired on Hulu as Weekend Aristocrats, about people who pay to stay at stately homes in the U.K. Most of Slade’s segments were about him complaining about being a baronet, which is basically the lowest rung of the British aristocracy, so he always gets seated at the far end of the table.
“I’d much rather be a duke. Or a prince!” he said, repeatedly.
It looks like nobody really wants to sit at the end of the table with Sir Ben, though, because he’s still looking for someone young, “fit” and ready to bear a male heir.
He does know that he’s not allowed to Anne Boleyn her if she has a daughter, right?
Slade once dated a lady named Fiona Aitken, whom he took to court to figure out who would get their dog in the break-up. Aitken later married the Earl of Carnarvon, which means she is a countess and the actual lady of the house where they film Downton Abbey, which is not really relevant to this story but I added it because it seems to really grind Slade’s gears.
