Attractive, elegant, hardworking and with a great sense of humour, Heather Heber Percy had not been conspicuously successful in the search for true love..
It was not until she was over 50 that she found the man she calls ‘the love of my life’.That happened in the unlikely setting of a vet’s surgery, where she had taken her aunt’s ailing poodle.
Simon Harvey, a star of the BBC television series Vets in Practice, stood on one side of the examination table, Heather on the other.They are married and have now been together since 1999.
Until this point Heather, who runs a marriage bureau, had spent years listening to other people telling her their problems with finding love.She had opened the bureau after working for the Samaritans in Shrewsbury, taking phone calls late at night from lonely farmers.
While other introduction agencies went to the wall, hers, The County Register, has been running for 25 years, possibly because Heather’s own experiences show what does not make a good relationship.
‘I was sent off to boarding school at the age of seven, which was a bit cruel,’ she tells me ‘My parents had a great social life down in south-west Wales so they thought ‘Get rid of the children and we’ll have a good time.’Unfortunately, my mother met another man and ran off with him.It was a high scandal and had a traumatic effect on me – she was the light of my life.’
In her unhappiness, Heather decided she would never get married, but then broke her own rule at 21 by rushing to marry the wrong man.
‘It lasted two years.I was a fashion model with Lucy Claytons.He went on to become a multimillionaire.’
At 27, still modelling and with a flat in fashionable Beauchamp Place in London, her life changed again.Out of the blue, her father packed his bags and moved to Ibiza, inviting her to spend summer on the island.There she met Cyril Heber-Percy, manager of a local four-start hotel and ‘devastatingly handsome’.‘Ibiza became home to both of us.At first I commuted to work in London, then I started my own boutique designing clothes in Ibiza.’
The relationship broke up when she was 40, living in San Lorenzo two miles up a dirt track with two young daughters in a run-down farmhouse with no water or electricity.Heather says it was all her fault – ‘a salutary lesson’.
She brought her daughters back to to live in a remote house near Ludlow in Shropshire, where my grandparents lived. She also started working for the Samaritans.’It was then that Heather saw the loneliness of the country life, particularly affecting men, mostly farmers.Calls came locally and from all over the countryside .With a woman friend, a fellow Samaritan, Heather decided to start a club for lonely farmers.‘The BBC got hold of us and put us on the news, the Farming Programme followed.Women clients began pouring in.In those days every woman wanted to meet a farmer, thinking they had a lot of money.They didn’t realise the farmer wanted a wife to share the burden of getting up at dawn and working all hours.
‘Today women have a strong independent streak and being down on the farm has lost its appeal.Now there are hardly any farmers on our books.City traders, it seems, are both lonely and needy.’
The farmers’ club soon became an introductions agency and The County Register now operates nationwide, with a £2000-a-year membership fee.Many clients are women in their 30s who have pursued a career and suddenly panic and want children.The agency can introduce them to new dates every month.
‘We just speed up the process of meeting people,’ says Heathers.‘Usually men in their early 40s are looking to settle down.I tell women in their 30s to be prepared to look for someone in their early 40s because that is the age of available men.’
Unlike many agencies, Heather’s never turns people down because of their age.
‘I have no age limit.We even found two or three dates for a man who was 90.What matters is your physical ability, whether you are fit and active.Older people have worked and had a life.They know who they are and what they want.It is very satisfying when you bring older people together.’
The people she cannot match are those who lie about their age and men who try to do that are marched straight out of the door.
‘If I get a man of 70 coming along saying ‘I want to meet someone of 50’, I say ‘In your dreams’, I tell men ‘Own age group or 10 years younger’.To women I say ‘Own age group or 10 years older’.If you go out of the 10 year gap, it doesn’t work.Everyone has to bring either a driving licence or passport, so they cannot knock off the years.
‘Even though we are a business and have to make money, we draw the line at taking on people who are totally unsuitable.The other day a plastic surgeon claimed he was 65 and asked to meet a woman in her late 40s or early 50s.His driving licence gave his age as 75.So he wanted to meet a woman getting on for 30 years younger!I object to that.I’m rooting for women, not for men.Women, too, lie about their age.To those who say ‘I look 10 years younger than I am,’ Heather replies that they are very lucky but they cannot actually change their age.
‘The problem is that if you go out of that 10 year age gap you have different energy levels’.She explains. ‘You can be caught out.’
While fewer people are getting married, they still want to live as couples, perhaps retaining their own homes and house-hopping between the two properties while keeping their finances separate.As Heather points out:‘If a woman marries and the man moves into her house, he will be entitled to half the money from her house if it comes to a divorce.People think a lot more about these things.’
While we have been talking, Heather’s husband, Simon, has been waiting discreetly in his office.During the week, Heather lives on a boat near her London office and returns home to Hereford at the weekend.‘We have been together since 1999.I met him after taking my aunt’s standard poodle, who had a growth on its tummy, to the local vet.It was Simon.He advised an operation but, unfortunately, the poodle died.A week later he phoned my aunt to say how sad it was.Then he said, ‘I think your niece is quite fanciable.Is she free?’‘My aunt did not hesitate.She told him, ‘Oh, it’s very nice of you to say that, dear.Here’s her telephone number.’
‘We went out for a coffee but when he asked me for a dinner date I told him I had to go to Majorca, where I had just bought a little house. I asked him to come out and join me and that was that.
We are sort of latecomers to all this – we mostly meet at weekends, but it works very well.’
