“AT LEAST I AM NOT BORED”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29232, 16 June 1960, Page 2

“AT LEAST I AM NOT BORED”

Mrs Donald Campbell Prefers Anxiety

Donald Campbell is now testing his new Bluebird car for an attempt on the land speed record. In September, on Utah Salt Flats, he hopes to improve the 394 miles an hour of John Cobb in 1947, says a London correspondent. One person who desperately hopes he will succeed is his wife, cabaret singer Tonia Bern. Her hopes do not merely spring from wifely enthusiasm, but from his hint that he will give up racing once he has broken the record. Tonia is not a nervous wife. “You can die of two things—boredom or anxiety. I would sooner die of anxiety,” she says. Close friends know this tall, blonde, green-eyed woman, who for all her adult life has been

used to seeing her name in the papers, would gladly settle for a quiet family life if it were only possible. She was born in Belgium, the daughter of a hotel owner. Her first marriage was to a London restaurant manager, Michael Howard—after, as she says, “being proposed to eight times by millionaires.”

She became Campbell’s third wife in December, 1958, after a whirlwind courtship. Her age? “As Tonia Bern I am 25.” she says. “As Mrs Campbell I am 29.”