'All Ulrika wants is Sven'

Ulrika Jonsson is "desperately keen" to settle down and spend the rest of her life with Sven-Goran Eriksson who she has been seeing for more than four months, her step-father said today.

Michael Brodie said 34-year-old Miss Jonsson had been seeing the 53-year-old England manager since before Christmas.

Mr Brodie, 64, said she believes he is "the one" although Eriksson has a girlfriend of three years, 37-year-old Italian lawyer Nancy Dell'Olio.

Mr Brodie, a company director, added: "Ulrika is desperately keen to settle down and find happiness and I think she thinks that Sven is the kind of person that gives her that stability she is after, long-term.

"To the best of my knowledge she is very, very fond of him, and certainly would like to spend her life with him.

"She has been having a relationship with Sven since pre-Christmas definitely. This is not just a trivial relationship for her. When it comes to matters like this she is a very serious girl."

Mr Brodie was speaking from the home he shares in Berkshire with Ulrika's mother, Gun, and their son, Ulrika's half-brother Kristian, 20. He added: "From what I'm reading Nancy is laying all these claims to him saying she is engaged to him while Ulrika is presented as a scarlet woman who has lured him away. Sven is his own man and he must make his own decision."

Mr Brodie, a director of Universal Pictures, has been married to Ulrika's mother for 25 years, and says he spoke to his step-daughter this week.

He said: "At the moment she is despondent because of the way she is being portrayed. Some papers say she has had all these boyfriends but the truth of the matter is that she has probably had about three.

"Ulrika is in the limelight and has been since she got on television as a young girl, but the truth is she is a homebody."

He added: "Ulrika works very hard and spends a lot of her time looking after her two children, but she is always under pressure from the media even though she doesn't seek publicity." Mr Brodie said of their relationship: "The media were very slow to get on to it - they weren't keeping it particularly secret. They have dined out together quite frequently both locally and in London and it was astonishing that nobody picked it up."

But he said the pair were still living separately. "How much time they spend together I don't know."

Last summer Miss Jonsson split from her boyfriend of eight months, London PR tycoon Simon Astaire, whom she had been dating after splitting from Markus Kempen, the father of her second child, Bo.

She was married to cameraman John Turnbull, by whom she has a son Cameron. Miss Jonsson also dated footballer Stan Collymore, whom she dumped after he hit her in a Paris bar, and Prince Edward.

Mr Brodie said: "There was that very unfortunate incident with Collymore, which was terribly bad judgment, and again it didn't work out with Markus Kempen, who abandoned her. She has spent the last miserable year, almost, with the baby, although luckily Bo is very well at the moment."

He also denied suggestions that his step-daughter was seeking publicity, and defended her decision to attend the Chelsea-Manchester United match last weekend, a game Eriksson was also at.

"She didn't go there to embarrass Sven," he said. "My son Kristian is a huge Manchester United fan and she managed to get tickets. How disappointed would he have been if she had cancelled that? Why shouldn't she go?"

Neither Miss Jonsson nor Eriksson have denied the suggestion that they are having an affair, despite Eriksson's live-in Miss Dell'Olio insisting she was engaged to him.

However Eriksson's business manager Lars Sternmarker told the Standard he had not heard that Eriksson and Miss Dell'Olio had plans to marry.

He said: "I did not know that. Sven's private life is private, as he himself said yesterday."

Miss Dell'Olio remained at home today after his departure.

Eriksson is lining up a lucrative contract to appear in a series of television adverts for Italian pasta sauces. Mr Sternmarker admitted the timing - in the middle of massive publicity over his relationship - could not be better.

He added: "Of course I am pleased. The commercials have already been filmed, but the deal is still on the drawing board and we do not yet have a date for when the commercials will be shown." The England manager may also have other deals in the offing, he said.

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