FOR more than 30 years it has been the marriage that dared not speak its name; now the life of the only Thai bride in the village is about to get a great deal tougher.

Britain’s growing legion of middle-aged men and their “internet-order” Thai wives have long suffered social disapproval after their marriages. But their struggle for acceptance is about to be dealt a further blow, by the television show Little Britain.

Next week millions of viewers will be introduced to the marital travails of Dudley, a scruffy, middle-aged gent who seeks the love of his life in a Thai Brides For You brochure.

When Ting Tong Macadangdang arrives on his doorstep, she is not the slender vision of oriental womanhood he had hoped for. The sketch even has a concluding catchphrase, shortly to spread into the vernacular, when each week Dudley agrees that Ting Tong can stay “just for one night”.

It would be fair to say that the show is not being looked forward to by those involved in the Thai introductions business. “I’m not too keen on comedy,” said Lawrence Lynch, 52, not a little apprehensively. He found his Thai bride Thapanee, 36, through a marriage agency nine years ago.

Now he is one of the trade’s most unashamed advocates. Through his Kidderminster-based company, Thai Professional Introductions, he claims responsibility for “750 successful marriages” since 1997.

“Ting Tong means crazy in Thai,” he said. “I suppose I can’t be too sensitive about these things. But I’m being asked to do silly things nearly every week. I wouldn’t mind being on Newsnight or something sensible, but I’m always getting lumped with the complete wackos.”

Already, he says, he has trouble getting his former clients to acknowledge that they ever used his service. “I’d say 90 per cent of the successful couples try to pretend they just met in a bar or somewhere,” he said. “I get invited to weddings and they say, ‘Can you just tell everyone you’re a friend, someone we happen to know’. ”

Meanwhile, unsuccessful couples receive unsympathetic treatment in the local press. One of the most celebrated Anglo-Thai disasters was that of Brian Clegg, the former Northern Gas chairman who, aged 75, was wed to 23-year-old Banjit Sawaengdee. She left him days after her arrival in Britain. Even as the phenomenon surfaced on television screens, with the Coronation Street butcher Fred Elliott being duped by a bride who was only after a stake in his sausage empire, life was cruelly mirroring art in Milton Keynes.

Robert Memery, 46, a butcher, was fleeced of his life savings by a masseuse he had met in a hotel in Thailand. When the marriage fell apart, he discovered that his brother-in-law and niece were his wife’s husband and daughter, and his new sister-in-law had been a paid actress.

In 2003 David Blunkett threatened to stamp out the trade in Thai brides by forcing the 25,000 Thais who were arriving annually on student and tourist visas to pledge not to marry. Those who broke their pledge could be deported.

This has not stopped agencies who help to bring back Thai brides on fiancé or spouse visas. Between 2001 and 2003 the Home Office has granted settlement to 3,600 wives, partners or fiancés from Thailand.

The annual numbers of Thai wives and partners granted settlement has been growing — up by a quarter in 2003, it far surpasses the trickle of Thai husbands arriving in Britain.

Ken Moylan, 52, a dentist from Birmingham, is prepared for the potential fallout from the Little Britain send-up. He found his 30-year-old wife Wam through Thai Professional Introductions four years ago.

“I landed in Bangkok at 1pm,” he said. “By four I was in the meeting room. The first girl I met looked nothing like she did in the brochure. The second girl didn’t, either, but she was the girl that I’m married to. We just got on so well.”

Middle-aged women are the fiercest critics of his happiness, he said, adding that he was looking forward to the new Little Britain series. “It sounds hilarious,” he said. “Some people will be offended but they are probably the ones who don’t want to admit they found their wife through an agency.”

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