IT S not every day you get a birthday card from former prime minister Tony Blair or a handful of TV and film celebrities either. But then not everyone has a partner like Marcus Slack who spent months working to make Charlotte Durrant s 40th birthday a re

IT'S not every day you get a birthday card from former prime minister Tony Blair or a handful of TV and film celebrities either.

But then not everyone has a partner like Marcus Slack who spent months working to make Charlotte Durrant's 40th birthday a really special occasion.

Marcus, aged 36, of Cross Way, Harpenden, said: "I wanted to surprise Charlotte and I came up with the idea of getting celebrities to sign cards for her."

He found a web site that told you how to contact the stars and sent unsigned cards to 20 famous people asking them to write a message for Charlotte's 40th.

Out of the 20 cards that Marcus sent to various celebrities, nine of them responded including Johnny Depp, Colin Firth, David Jason, Gordon Ramsay, ex-PM Tony Blair, Robert de Niro, John Travolta and Coventry City boss Chris Coleman.

The X Factor presenter Dermot O'Leary wrote a message telling the mother-of-two she probably looked more like 25 than 40.

Marcus, a sales account manager for Virgin Media in Hemel Hempstead, said: "Charlotte used to work in sales for Capital Radio so she was used to meeting celebrities but now she's a full-time mum I thought it would liven up her birthday to get all these famous people writing to her for her birthday. I'm just amazed nearly half of them responded.