Cry for Tim Rice - he's single again
Richard Kay
Last updated at 00:00 09 December 2003
SOMEONE, somewhere could write a musical about it. Urbane, Oscarwinning lyricist Sir Tim Rice keeps letting beautiful women slip through his fingers.
For the past year, Sir Tim, 59, has been romancing foxy PR and journalist Gina Rozner, who is 20 years his junior.
But, sadly, the songwriter - whose oeuvre includes Don't Cry For Me Argentina - has now had the piano lid slammed down firmly on his fingers.
'I dumped him in no uncertain terms,' Gina tells me at her home in North London.
'It was simply a case that we each had totally different agendas.
'He is a multimillionaire who would want to see me, say, once or twice a week.
And that would be that. But I was looking for something else. I wanted a rather more permanent and long-term relationship - and a more meaningful one.' Devastatingly, she adds: 'I have to say that Tim is a very, very nice man. He is charming, absolutely delightful to be with. We haven't parted on bad terms.
But we wanted different things in life.' Sir Tim - who has won three Academy Awards, for Evita, Aladdin and The Lion King - first met Gina when she interviewed him for an article she was writing for a newspaper.
She met him again last autumn - at the Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards and they started making beautiful music together.
But the break-up is all too familiar. Dithering Tim could never make up his mind about singer Elaine Paige with whom he had a 12-year dalliance, and has obstinately remained married to his wife of 28 years, Jane, despite obtaining a divorce decree nisi, which he never made absolute.
He has a son and daughter by Jane, and another daughter, Zoe, five, by a lover, blonde artist Nell Sully, who he lists in Who's Who as a 'partner'.
Nell, 33, met him when she did interior design work on his house in Barnes, and lived with him for around three years.
And what of Karen Phillipps, 46, the former companion of the late libel lawyer George Carman, who was reportedly presiding at dinner parties at Tim's home?
Says Gina: 'She was never his girlfriend. . .'
