The minutes of  Nicolas Anelka’s wedding to Barbara Tausia read not altogether dissimilarly to those of Ginger and Ace’s wedding in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Casino’, with Anelka playing the part of Stone- presumably in a brave bid to avoid typecasting issues later in his career- and bunking off sometime during The Birdie Song to get in touch with his other lover, Natalie Merriman of Manchester.

Who would ever have thought that two such disparate culture reference points as the notoriously sour faced and moody Chelsea forward and the often unfairly overlooked follow up to Goodfellas would ever twain in such a way?  Certainly, we can be confident, not anybody that has ever sat through Casino, which, at some points during its weighty duration, can give the impression of lasting longer than Anelka ever managed to stick it out at any club before Chelsea- or including Chelsea, if you’ve agreed to pause for toilet breaks.

For her part, Merriman retains deep sorrow over the incident: “I was surprised to see he shaved down there- but it did make it feel nicer,” she reminisces, with, we can only imagine, the wistful and longing, yet strangely contended, tone of the old lady telling the story in Titanic.  (We never of course found out if Jack, too, were shaved down there but, given the well documented advantages to the smoothly cut swimmers during the Olympics, and given his eventual fate, it seems safe to assume that by 1912, the Brazilian look had yet to catch on amongst the fellas.)

Merriman isn’t, though, languid lost love or not, coy about filling in us with the type of more practical and workmanlike details we would expect to find in a soul bearing confessional of this nature (and the accompanying chest bearing photo shoot pictures, handy for the visual learners among us to get a proper grip on all the issues at hand- provided we’re in the house alone):  “he had an astonishing gymnastic tongue,” she says, placing an importance in this fact of no doubt disquieting impact on those of us nationwide who can’t even roll ours.

Their relationship ended when she read in the papers that he was married and was having a party in Morocco to celebrate.  “I rang and texted but no reply.”-  Rookie error there, continuing to text; as a general rule, three no replies to your texts or call backs to your phone, plus a wedding in Morocco to another woman, and, girl, he’s just not that into you.

He did try, albeit a little clumsily, to patch things up, bless him:  “he did reply eventually saying it was his brother that got married and not him,” Merriman reports, with justifiable anger at just what he was trying to take her for.

Still, can’t fault him for trying:  if he’d pulled that line off, it would have been an even more impressive trick than the tongue thing.

Written by Chris Mackin

More Natalie Merriman images: Natalie Merriman WAG Gallery