The truth about Ulrika and me

Leaving a restaurant is incredibly dangerous if you're on the arm of Simon Astaire, the "multi-millionaire PR guru" and currently one of the most eligible men in London.

If you're female, with long, dark hair, and have just shared pasta with Simon at Bice on Albemarle Street, as I did earlier this week, you are likely to be mistaken for Nancy Dell'Olio, the girlfriend of England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson.

We checked the street for paparazzi as we left, for Bice is Simon's regular, where he had lunch with Nancy in the middle of the storm over Sven's alleged affair with Ulrika Jonsson. The plot thickened when it was revealed that Astaire had had a relationship with Ulrika last summer. Was he offering Nancy advice? Were they consoling each other over broken hearts?

Astaire has decided to put the record straight. He has never spoken on the subject before, but even though he and Nancy laughed about the papers the next day, he's growing weary of the phone calls from journalists to his friends, trying to dig some dirt (all his friends will say to me is that he is "generous, charming, always punctual").

"Someone wrote that I chose this restaurant knowing I'd be photographed with Nancy, that I was courting the attention," he says. "But we had nothing to hide. I'd been approached by a mutual friend who said that Sven and Nancy were looking for a charitable project. I first met Nancy last December and she explained she was so moved after 11 September she wanted to do something positive.

"I told her the story that has been with me since I was a boy, about the fact that in the First World War the Germans and the British played football in no man's land. We decided to set up a charitable foundation to build pitches in trouble spots around the world. The subject of Ulrika never came up. By some weird coincidence, I just happened to know everyone involved. The story became far bigger than I imagined it would. Being the focus of attention took me by surprise."

Astaire is used to being on the fringes of celebrity - he started out as an actor's agent and now has a successful marketing and PR business, Protocol (part-owned by Philip Knatchbull, grandson of Lord Mountbatten), hooking up Hollywood stars with luxury designer brands, to their mutual benefit.

It was Simon who brokered the deal between Lady Helen Taylor and Armani, ensured Nicole Kidman was weighed down with a Bulgari necklace at this year's Oscars, and commissioned Fay Weldon to write a novel called The Bulgari Connection.

Some of his closest friends are movie stars, and indeed he was best man at Sting and Trudie Styler's wedding. He is used to turning up at premieres with the most beautiful women in the world on his arm and being ignored. "That doesn't bother me," he says. "I'm attracted to women who are successful and lauded by others, but I don't have a tinge of jealousy, I suppose because I've always been relatively successful."

He had a serious relationship with Saffron Aldridge, the face of Ralph Lauren, and they have a nine-year-old son, Milo; Astaire takes him to see Spurs play at home every other weekend. "Milo means everything to me," he says. Before he met Ulrika, he had a yearlong relationship with Inës Sastre, the Spanish model and actress who is the face of Lancùme.

Was he ever engaged to Inës (he seemed head over heels at the time)? "I've never been engaged to anyone," he says. "I'm 41, I have a nice flat in Kensington, and of course I want to fall in love. If I meet someone to share it with me I'll buy a house in the country and have a chocolate labrador." When Astaire started seeing Ulrika Jonsson, he suddenly found himself with someone in an altogether different stratosphere of fame, and that came as a shock. "The whole syndrome of these girls is overpowering," he says.

"I can sympathise with Benjamin Bratt, who talked recently about what it was like going out with Julia Roberts. Fame takes a relationship into a different dimension, you start not to do certain things because you might be seen. As soon as Ulrika and I started going out, there were headlines saying 'Mr Right', and pieces that said, 'Ulrika has found her man, a millionaire to boot'."

He shakes his head at the memory. "I'm never going to talk about our relationship because it's private," he says. He is not just being gentlemanly; he probably wants to avoid a mention in her autobiography.

"I'd read things in the paper and it sounded as if it had come from me. Then you get suspicious of your friends; who was the close friend who said we had an argument in San Lorenzo? But for people to keep dragging it up now is ridiculous."

They were introduced by a mutual friend at a party, and only saw each other for three months. "When the whole Sven thing started, the papers said she was phoning me every day to ask for advice. We never speak."

They were together when Astaire celebrated his 40th birthday with a lavish party at the Ritz. Each guest was asked to recite an anecdote about the birthday boy, and Ulrika told the one about the time he wanted to buy her a birthday present, anything she wanted - "There I was, trying to be Mr Big Shot," he says wryly, "and she chose a lampshade worth £1.50." Perhaps that is partly the reason he serial-dates famous women: they're independently wealthy.

Simon, in turn, is at ease in the world they inhabit, with the lavish hotel suites and limousines on tap. His father, Edgar, 72, is a wealthy stockbroker, and Simon grew up in a house off Eaton Place; his parents divorced when he was 10, and his mother still lives in Chelsea. He has two brothers, Mark, 42, and Peter, 39, but says they aren't that close.

So is the description of a selfmade multi-millionaire correct, or has he merely mined the family fortune? There were rumours that one of his businesses, Zed Kidz, a children's clothing company, had closed in financial difficulties.

"I offered to help," he says. "But I had nothing to do with that company. I didn't have a share in it. I do have a comfortable lifestyle," he grins. "I can pay my bills. And yes, I have made my own money."

Astaire went to Harrow but was "asked not to come back" when he was 17. His first job was answering phones at Eric Glass, a theatrical agency in Berkeley Square; he was soon poached by the giant agency ICM. With his public school accent and boyish good looks, he went down well schmoozing actors in LA, and he still goes there for a week every month or so to wheel and deal.

To describe his lifestyle as comfortable is an understatement. I had a drink with him once in LA. We met at his hotel. Only those with serious money frequent the Peninsula, where he always has the same suite, and they know him well enough to stock his mini-bar with only Diet Coke (he is teetotal).

On leaving the bar that evening, Simon offered me the services of his personal driver, Steve, on call 24 hours a day. Steve is seated in Simon's little black Porsche for the duration of our lunch today.

Has all the attention put him off dating famous women in future? "Of course not. Whatever baggage there is, if I'm in love with someone, I'll go out with her. Nothing will stop me. Ulrika and I went out for a few months. I've moved on. End of story."