Real Lives: Thrilled Pippa hopes it’s third time lucky for vows

Life for Pippa Brooks-Donaldson has been anything but dull, writes John Gibson.

And as the years pass – she prefers “matures” – there are no signs of the sun setting on it. Indeed, she is contemplating marriage. Her third. Third time lucky, she told me.

While the big day is as distant as May, she can barely contain her excitement. Mind you, over the years I’ve found her the excitable type.

Pippa’s introduction to the world predictably was explosive.

“I’ve never been allowed to forget that I was born in Edinburgh at precisely one minute to one,” she says. “The gun in those days was Mons Meg.”

Her father was a major in the Argylls and fought alongside Mad Mitch in the Aden Emergency. She was a St George’s School for Girls pupil for 13 years, completing her basic education at the Dugdale McAdam business college, with a stint at Aberdeen University.

She recalls: “My first job was private secretary to Edinburgh architect Charles Donaldson. I resigned by lunchtime after spending that morning licking 100 stamps.

“I went down to London to join the Saatchi & Saatchi organisation for several years. I returned to Edinburgh to work for RBS in marketing in 1991, resuming my friendship with the man who was to become my first husband.

“We soon moved to America – he was a Virginian – and got married and divorced there. The marriage lasted 12 weeks but I stayed on in America for four years before coming back to Edinburgh.”

She returned to Edinburgh in 1997 and met her second husband, Neil John Macleod, the same year at a Conservative cocktail party. That marriage lasted three years before they divorced in 2007.

She could write a book but we moved on apace to September last year when she met Michael Munro-Dunn, 65, at a Scottish Ballet event sponsored by Brooks Brothers, the American-owned tailor, at its George Street store.

Store manager Peter Heggie introduced them. He will give her away come May and his daughter will be one of the flower girls.

Pippa’s business card says “interior designer” and her fiancé is never less than immaculate when pictured in the papers.

The lovelight burning, she says of him: “He’s the perfect gentleman.”

Nosey about her age, I was told: “Just say she’s in her forties. I’m happy with that.”

It’s a deal. Meantime, the couple are ensconced at her place in Heriot Row. Save me a slab of the wedding cake.