Andy Burnham looks like being chosen by Labour MPs to become Britain’s new Prime Minister in what has been dubbed a ‘coronation’ for the so-called ‘King of the North’ – but his own queen once made an ill-fated pick on TV’s Blind Date.

The newly elected Makerfield MP was accompanied at his by-election triumph last week by his wife of 26 years Marie-France van Heel, known to friends as Frankie.

The couple, both 56, have two sons and a daughter, having first met as students at Cambridge University in 1989 – bonded by a shared love of indie band the Smiths. 

But their early romance had to overcome one unusual hurdle, when Frankie asked her boyfriend whether she could appear on ITV show Blind Date in January 1992 – leading to a distastrous Gibraltar trip and her potential match calling her a ‘cold fish’.

Mr Burnham had agreed to the televised appearance, though later told of watching the primetime Saturday night episode worriedly ‘watching through my fingers’ and from behind the sofa.

Dutch-born marketing executive Frankie was a social and political sciences student at the time, while Mr Burnham was doing an English degree.

She has subsequently revealed how her decision to go on the show was part of earlier plans to become a children’s television presenter. 

She said in an interview on ex-employer Heavenly’s website: ‘I thought that appearing on a TV dating show might raise my profile and help my career – 20 years of intermittent mickey-taking was the result but I’m happy to embrace my 15m of fame/shame!’

Andy Burnham’s then-girlfriend, now wife, Marie-France van Heel – known to friends as Frankie – appeared in January 1992 on ITV show Blind Date, hosted by Cilla Black

Dutch-born marketing executive Marie-France van Heel has been wed to Mr Burnham since 2000 – they are seen at Ashton Town FC last Friday after his Makerfield by-election win

Mr Burnham met his future wife at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam College in 1989, when he was studying English and she social and political sciences

Frankie sat on one side of the Blind Date barrier familiar to millions tuning in and was given the chance to ask three men on the other side a set of questions.

Viewers heard how she captained Fitzwilliam College’s women’s football team and fancied actor Matt Dillon, star of films such as Drugstore Cowboy, There’s Something About Mary and Crash. 

She went on to choose a contestant described only as Will from Surrey, who was clad in a red sweatshirt and blue dungarees. 

His answers included offering up a rhyme in her honour, when answering her question about what he did in the shower by saying: ‘I generally make up poems and short stories.’

He followed up by attempting to woo her with: ‘Oh, Frankie, oh, Frankie – your name is quite cranky. Pick me for your Blind Date, and there’ll be no hanky-panky.’

She then asked the three men: ‘What would you do if you were my first taste of British men?’

Will told her in response: ‘You give me half an hour and I’ll give you the best time of your life.’

Frankie went on to choose him and they were sent on a date to Gibraltar – only for things to go wrong from there.

Frankie sat on one side of the Blind Date barrier familiar to millions tuning in and was given the chance to ask three men on the other side a set of questions

‘Will from Surrey’ – future Conservative Party marketing director Will Harris – wore a red sweater and blue dungarees as he sat in the middle of his fellow contestants

Frankie and Will were told by Cilla Black they would go on a dating trip to Gibraltar – although both agreed on the following week’s show that it had not gone well

The following week, the pair returned to update Blind Date’s host and viewers on how they fared – with both making it clear they were not meant to be.

Will labelled her a ‘cold fish’, prompting Frankie to hurl a cushion at him.

He later remembered, in an interview with the Daily Mail: ‘The end of the programme was awful.

‘We left the show and went back stage and she said to me: “F*** off, I never want to see you again.”‘

Yet the pair have since bumped into each other again – including once in a House of Commons bar in 2003 – with Will Harris then employed as marketing director for the Conservative Party, under leader Michael Howard.

Frankie was by then married to Mr Burnham, who had been elected as MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester two years earlier.

Mr Harris recalled: ‘She was there with Andy. We are on different sides of the political spectrum. We have totally different views about things but we have this common interest from all those years ago.

‘If we ran into each other now we would have a really nice chat.’

Mr and Mrs Burnham are seen alongside their daughter Rosie after he won last Thursday’s Makerfield by-election

The pair are pictured after he was previously re-elected for Leigh at the 2010 general election

Andy Burnham returned to the Commons in triumph on Monday after a nine-year absence – posing for a selfie with gathered Labour MPs ahead of his expected Downing Street move 

He added: ‘When I met her, Frankie, she was clearly left-wing – from the Miliband set. We had some mutual friends from Cambridge. She was a nice girl, but she had a passion even then.

‘When we went on the show I expected it to be a bit of fun. But it transpired that she had a boyfriend already – Andy – so there was no romance between us at all.

‘She talked about Andy in quite an admiring tone even then. When I ran into her a few years later she was equally admiring – praising Andy for how he was getting on politically. She is a real trooper when it comes to being the political wife.’

He told how their paths have crossed on other occasions, with their rival marketing firms even pitching to claim the same clients. 

Mr Burnham himself has said of Frankie’s primetime TV experience: ‘Blind Date were holding an audition in the college and my wife asked me if I minded if she went along.

‘I didn’t mind at the beginning but had second thoughts when she got on the show. I watched the TV from behind the sofa through my fingers.’

‘Luckily for me, she preferred me. It was all good fun and she and Will have kept in touch.’

After their time at Cambridge, Mr and Mrs Burnham married in 2000 and relocated north when Mr Burnham became MP for Leigh the following year.

He stepped down from the Commons in 2017 and was elected as mayor of Greater Manchester, winning follow-up terms in 2021 and 2024 before signalling this year his intent to stand for the Labour leadership – prompting Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister on Monday.

The Burnhams’ three children, Jimmy, Rosie and Annie are all now in their 20s.

Despite remaining by Mr Burnham’s side, and being seen at the Makerfield count and his victory rally at Ashton Town FC last week, his wife has largely stayed out of the spotlight in recent years.

And he has suggested she had some doubts about his plans to seek a return to Westminster following nine years as Greater Manchester’s mayor.

He recently revealed her initial reaction was ‘probably a two-word answer… probably half-joking’, adding that there was ‘some encouragement needed’.

Her role in marketing has involved working with clients including MTV and Sky.  

In July 2023, she left the Heavenly agency to become Be.EV’s chief marketing officer, rising to the role of chief customer officer in July 2024.

In September of that year the partially employee-owned firm announced she had been appointed to its board of directors.

In a recent Sunday Times profile, Mrs Burnham was described by a close friend as ‘beautiful, very gentle, and highly intelligent’ – and the Makerfield MP’s former English literature tutor today told the Times she was ‘the coolest girl in the college’.

Despite having appeared to delete any social media accounts recently, Mrs Burnham has gone online in the past to aim barbs at various Tory politicians.

In 2013, when the country was run by David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, she posted: ‘Can’t we have a military coup to get rid of our democratically elected government???’

She has also described ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson as an ‘idiot’ over schools policy and said of former Health Secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt: ‘He looked bloody awful. Not surprising, he is feeling haunted about totally mis-managing the NHS.”

In a 2023 interview shared on her former employer Heavenly’s website, she was asked to identify ‘the last thing that made you laugh out loud’.

She replied: ‘Rishi Sunak saying he was a big proponent of green policies. When I say laugh out loud, please add “in despair” after…’