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'BNP ballerina' Simone Clarke
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The "BNP Ballerina" Simone Clarke is to marry the Far Right party's councillor Richard Barnbrook, it was announced today.
"She's a beautiful lady," Mr Barnbrook told More4 News.
The love affair blossomed after Clarke, a principal dancer with the English National Ballet (ENB), was outed in January as a card-carrying member of the BNP.
At the time, she was in a relationship with fellow ENB star Yat-Sen Chang, a Cuban immigrant of Chinese descent, with whom she has a daughter.
When anti-fascist protesters demonstrated outside the ENB's London Coliseum home where Clarke was starring in Giselle, Mr Barnbrook turned up to lend his support.
"We've been going out for over nine months - I'm surprised the media haven't found out before," said Mr Barnbrook, BNP councillor for Barking and Dagenham.
Mr Barnbrook said: "Seven weeks ago I gave her a diamond ring. I'm traditional like that. In the future we will probably get married and have a family.
"I first met Simone at the stage door when she danced in Giselle at the Coliseum. I gave her a bunch of flowers on behalf of the party.
"After that we met a couple of times and had a laugh and a drink and a joke. We have so much in common - we are both very interested in the arts."
Ms Clarke split from her partner and by April was in a relationship with Mr Barnbrook.
The councillor said he had no reservations about becoming stepfather to Ms Clarke's five-year-old daughter, Olivia, who is mixed race.
"It doesn't bother me at all. I knew about Simone's child before I met her.
"If we do end up getting married, as far as I'm concerned, that child will be my child," he said.
Some people "outside the party with connections to more right wing parties" might be troubled by it, but he insisted: "I couldn't give a damn.
"Whatever the heart does is right, regardless."
Mr Barnbrook said in January that mixed-race children were "washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people", but today claimed that his remarks had been taken out of context.
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