Cash incentive to stay virtuous (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Cash incentive to stay virtuous

A GRANDFATHER is offering to pay his four teenage granddaughters £1,000 each if they don't live with a man before they get married.

Old-fashioned Christian Brann, 79, believes that couples who cohabit before marriage are living in sin, so he is offering his granddaughters a cash incentive to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Printing company boss Christian, of Kemble, has told the four girls - Cecile, Amelie and Rebecca, all 17, and Camilla, 16, - that they will be well rewarded if they do not live with anyone until they marry.

German-born Christian, who is to celebrate his own golden anniversary with his wife Mary-Rose, 69, in June this year, wants to lead a rebellion against the now common practice of young couples cohabiting and calling each other 'partners'.

"It's a bit tacky to go to a wedding when the couple have already been living for a number of years," said the father of four.

"It takes the gilt off the gingerbread - it does devalue the currency."

The wealthy granddad, a Christian by nature as well as by name, has promised sisters Amelie and Cecile Durand-Barthez, who live with their parents in Paris, and sisters Camilla and Rebecca Brann, of Poole, Dorset, that he will give them each the four figure sum on their wedding days.

And he is confident that the deal will work.

"I would bet anybody that none of my granddaughters will cohabit until they are married," said Christian, who founded Cirencester's biggest company, a printing firm that now employs 2,000 people.

He added: "All my granddaughters are boasting about it to their friends."

When his own children were in their teens he offered them £100 each if they did not smoke - and they never have, he said.

Rebecca, who is studying for her A-levels and wants to be a lawyer, said she thought her granddad's plan is a good idea.

She said out of the four girls only Amelie has a boyfriend at the moment. "He comes up with these wonderful schemes, my granddad," she said, laughing.

"Our whole family are Christians so it's what we believe in anyway. It's a nice incentive, though."

The teenager added: "It's a lovely idea that he wants that for us. The love in it is more important than the money.

"He wants me to be happy and safe."