Will Geri Halliwell's fiance fare any better than her 14 other boyfriends? The former Spice Girl aged 42 has announced her third engagement Plans to marry new fiance, Formula One boss Christian Horner Geri has been engaged at least twice before but has never married Also been linked to celebrities such as Robbie Williams and David Walliams With her svelte figure, glowing complexion and healthy bank balance, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell could be considered quite a catch. So one can forgive her new fiance, Formula One boss Christian Horner, for seeming rather pleased with himself. But one wonders if the 40-year-old quite knows what he's letting himself in for. For Geri's track record in this area is not what one would call encouraging. Not only has the 42-year-old made a habit of losing boyfriends in the way the rest of us lose umbrellas, but with her penchant for referring to herself in the third person and doing yoga in business meetings, she is also widely regarded as something of a fruitloop. Christian Horner: Geri met the Team Red Bull boss through her love of Formula One racing And in showbusiness, an industry packed with eccentrics, that's saying something. So despite the wonderful air of solemnity conveyed by the engagement announcement in The Times yesterday, her beloved mother Ana Maria may want to delay getting a hat just yet. For Geri has been engaged at least twice before and neither of those engagements got anywhere near the altar-and-gift-list stage. The first was to Demian Warner (5), a wealthy American whom she met in residential rehab in 2002 - he was there kicking drugs, while she was being treated for an eating disorder. Jamie Morrison: "He likes music and I like polo," said Geri of the polo player, left, in 1999. In fact, she found him dull. And right, Chris Evans, with many thinking the romance was cooked up by PR spinner Matthew Freud Robbie Williams: She linked up with the troubled ex-Take That star in 2001 Hardly an auspicious start. He proposed, she said yes - and then a few months later she dumped him by email. They had apparently argued over her rather unromantic insistence on a pre-nuptial agreement and an HIV test. (It later emerged that he called her "Shorty Spice" and had felt pressured into proposing marriage in the first place. Eat your heart out, Barbara Cartland.) More recently, Geri was engaged in 2009 to diminutive Italian businessman Fabrizio Politi, 40, (11) who proposed marriage and gave her a £150,000 diamond ring. Bobby Hashemi: Worth £45m, he took fright when she suggested that they live together after just weeks of dating, and dumped her But suddenly - for reasons never explained - Geri went off the idea, and off him as well. Politi, who had just declared how much he loved her, called it "a very bad situation." And how about Henry Beckwith (12), socialite heir to the property fortune made by Sir John Beckwith? They were said to be betrothed back in 2011, but they split amid reports of her intense jealousy of his friendships with other women. She was apparently "heartbroken." Even by her own account, Geri has a terrible knack for self-sabotage in matters of the heart. As she observed in a candid interview 12 years ago: "I think we all know that relationships haven't been one of my strong points." She added: "I think becoming famous arrested my development. I was emotionally immature and as a result, unable to have strong, intimate relationships with men. Indeed, her romances have been characterised by a peculiar blend of publicity-seeking and vulnerability. Demian Warner: Met at rehab in 2002. He proposed, but went back to America after a row, left, and right, Duncan James - dated in 2004 before the Blue singer moved on As she admits, the death of her beloved father Laurence, a car dealer, when she was only 21 left her prone to loneliness and yearning for a male figure in her life. But during the Spice Girls era, she failed to nurture a relationship. While Victoria Adams met David Beckham at this time, embarking upon a long marriage and going on to have four children, and Mel B married and quickly divorced her backing dancer Jimmy Gulzar, Geri just didn't find anyone who seemed a likely candidate as a life partner. She had a quick romance with Giovanni Laporta in 1997, a Porsche-driving double-glazing salesman from her home town of Watford, but that lasted about a month. Sacha Gervasi: Geri had his baby after a fling in 2005, left, and right with David Walliams - They had a six-week fling in 2007. The couple had known each other for years, and tried a romance. It never blossomed into anything more than dating After ditching her Spice Girls bandmates amid much acrimony in 1998, she then managed a longer spell with floppy-haired polo player Jamie Morrison (1), whom she started dating in 1999, but apparently he bored Geri and she dumped him. The hype machine went into overdrive when DJ Chris Evans (2) declared an interest in her in late 1999, just as she was struggling to carve out a solo career and releasing her first single, Lift Me Up. She played to the cameras by pretending to marry Evans on his TV show, TFI Friday, but friends insist that she genuinely thought they had a chance of the real thing. "It was as authentic as relationships go, in my shabby experience of relationships," she said later. He wasn't interested, though - and started a fling with actress Anna Friel soon after. Although very hurt, she readily took up with pop singer Robbie Williams (3), with whom she had a well-publicised fling over the summer of 2000 and early 2001. They enjoyed a break together in St Tropez, during which their every move was conveniently captured by photographers - from the pair zooming around the French resort on a scooter, to them canoodling on lilos, and her doing beachside yoga. Whatever her intentions, Robbie was certainly not ready for the Geri charm offensive. He later said he had been exasperated by her childish demands and possessive behaviour. Ivan 'Flipz' Velez: A dancer on the Spice Girls tour, he appeared in Geri's video for It's Raining Men. She broke up with him by phone after eight months She started speaking like a psychotic child and developed this possessed look. It was genuinely scaring me," he said, somewhat unchivalrously. He did, though, advise her to go to rehab to try and deal with her bulimia - a piece of advice which Geri later told interviewer Piers Morgan might just have saved her life. The rehab led, of course, to the ill-fated engagement to Demian Warner (5). Her next significant romance, with Blue singer Duncan James (6) in 2004, much like her liaison with Williams, also seemed to take place in the full glare of the cameras. He has since come out as bisexual. By this time Geri was 32 and ready, it seems, to start a family like all of the other Spice Girls. She found the answer in Sacha Gervasi (8), a heavy-set screenwriter based in LA, six years her senior. He is well-connected and met Geri socially. Their fling lasted for six weeks in the summer of 2005 and was over by the time she realised she was pregnant. He said he wanted to support her and the baby - but Geri insisted on raising their daughter Bluebell herself. She had proved an utterly devoted and exemplary mother. In the years since, she has had a series of short-lived romances - with actor David Walliams (9) and Sir David Frost's son Wilfred (13). She also attempted a romance with lothario Russell Brand (14). He was - with awful predictability - off flirting with someone else within a few days of them becoming an item.) Geri's subsequent liaison with shipping tycoon Fabrizio Politi was all over within three months, too. Before Horner, her last serious relationship was with Henry Beckwith, whom she dated on and off from April 2009 to October 2011. The pair were pictured having a blazing row on a beach in St Tropez in 2010 - supposedly after she caught him ogling other women - and they called it a day in October 2011, when Geri decided she "didn't trust him." Fabrizio Politi: Met in a Florence nightclub in 2009 and a week later Geri announced they were to wed. Holidayed in the Maldives, but then Geri got cold feet and called it off Disillusionment with relationships has become a recurring theme in her public pronouncements. As she told Hello! in 2008: "I've lost my faith in marriage. Most of my generation, their parents are divorced and I see so many people break up. As for my idealisation of what a relationship should look like, that has vanished. I don't see many couples or marriages I can use as a compass point. Not many people stick it out any more. I have learnt to cope by myself. But Geri being Geri - meaning restless, intense and as mercurial as she is insecure - the heartbreak didn't last for long. Now she has fixed upon Christian Horner. He is a millionaire, as Geri's lovers often seem to be, and his day job is as the boss of the Red Bull racing team. Geri first came into his orbit thanks to her interest in Formula 1 - she is friends with moguls Bernie Ecclestone and Eddie Jordan - and was pictured with Horner in 2009, although no one is suggesting that there was a romance then. He had been in a 14-year relationship with blonde Beverly Allen. Although they were not married, they lived together in some style in an Oxfordshire mansion complete with ducks, chickens, ponies and dogs. Miss Allen had his baby, a girl called Olivia, in October last year. However by this March, when the tot was six months old, he and Geri were firmly and publicly an item. Henry Beckwith: Said to be engaged in 2010, they had many friends in common and seemed a well-suited couple. However, they split in late 2011 after Geri felt that he had a wandering eye Friends of hers aver that Geri has "never been happier" and indeed she does look blissful in his company. He chartered a yacht this August to sail his Spice Girl around Portofino in Italy and to celebrate her birthday - she posted a picture on social media of herself looking super-happy while blowing out a candle. More recently they have stepped out to one of Kate Bush's London concerts and she has been at his side at various F1 events. Sources say that he is "good for her" and "sensible" and suggest that the idea of placing a notice in The Times - rather than taking the cash from a feelgood magazine - was all his. Sources also suggest she was encouraged into an engagement by seeing her friend Poppy Delevingne, the society model, marry this spring. "She has said that it has taken her a while to find the right one," said a source. She admits that she has been worrying too much about her career, but has been able to become a complete person with Christian. Apparently former bandmates Emma Bunton and Mel C were told the happy news before today, but not so Victoria Beckham - who doesn't pick up her calls - or Mel B, of whom Geri is supposedly slightly envious for doing so well on X Factor. Wilfred Frost: Geri was pictured at a party in 2012 with Frost, left, son of the legendary Sir David. It didn't last, possibly because he was 26 to her 41. Right, Russell Brand, who met Geri at the Olympics, but 13 days later he took another girl to his hotel It's all very heart-warming, of course, and nobody, surely, can begrudge Geri the chance to finally find her happy-ever-after. But can her new beau really tick all the boxes? By her own admission, the former Spice Girl has very high standards. Writing in her autobiography Just For The Record, she set out a list of all the things she wants her life partner to be. It runs: loves his mum, sexy, good-looking, funny, affectionate, with a healthy bank balance (bigger than mine). She also wants a partner to have faith in God and to be someone who is respected and admired, has earned prestige and honour in his own right. Also her man must be loyal and monogamous, generous and caring, want marriage and commitment, treat her like a queen, be average to tall in height, have free time to be with her, bring her soup and accept and love her "regardless of my body size." That's quite a list. One can only hope that in Mr Horner, Geri has finally found what she'd been searching for all these years.