Sarah Sands: Charlotte is everything a rugby player could ask for

As soon as I read of Charlotte Church's pregnancy by her Welsh rugby player boyfriend, Gavin Henson, I did the detox calculation. That would be a couple of months since the couple went on their romantic ski holiday in Chamonix. That evening, Church managed 10 sambucas and six vodkas. The linguistic effect found its way into the Church dictionary of quotations. She coaxed Henson: " Eat the fucking pizza or I'll rub it all over your face. Eat it or fuck off. I mean that." A past-it singer and a has-been sportsman set out together on the road to ruin.

So why do our spirits lift to see Church beaming from the front pages of the tabloids, just as they slide at the sight of Victoria Beckham's skinny, scowling, demented figure inside? There are cultural and temperamental differences between the Beckhams and the Hensons-to-be. Take the weddings: the Beckhams were already suffering from royal delusions and Getty-style security obsessions. Guests were instructed to dress in white, to drink rosé champagne and to give shopping vouchers rather than presents. The event was a parable of vanity and stupidity.

I imagine Henson's guests will wear whatever suits can be stretched to fit 26in necks and thighs the size of pillars. The presents will come from joke shops or Homebase. And the team will cheerfully swap the gay champagne for beer.

This is why I am strangely hopeful about the success of the Church/Henson union. Victoria Beckham and her husband are fantasy-fuelled, unsexed, banal, displaced freaks. You know you could always sit down for a pint or 30 with Charlotte Church.

She is astonishingly unaffected by childhood fame. She has no airs or graces and no sly modesty. She knew she had to leave "Pie Jesu" behind, just as Daniel Radcliffe outgrew Harry Potter. She could have turned into a Lena Zavaroni, anorexic and terrified by adulthood.

Church has had her sloshed nights out and a repertoire of expletives worthy of the Wife of Bath. But she has never whimpered about rehab or therapy. She has shrewdly reconciled angelic past and blowsy future, celebrity and reality, LA and Cardiff. And she has a sophisticated grasp of economic theory which she can express in layman's terms. As she put it recently: "I'm going out for dinner with my mum and she's spending £200, which goes a long way in Cardiff, although it's a bit tight considering it's my 21st, hey?"

There is nothing fake about Church. She is kind to her mother and loyal to friends. She is everything a rugby player could ask of a woman: transparent, cheerful, game, sexy, ready to drink you under the table.

Henson has not performed well on the field, suffering groin injuries (no wonder) and lack of fitness. But he is perfect husband material. As he says: "I believe I'm an honest person; there's nothing really complicated about me." He likes being recognised in the street "because it makes me realise who I am".

Compare Church with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who had a tragic attraction to unsuitable men - Prince Charles, Dodi Fayed and, above all, Will Carling. Diana was far too complex and needy and bulimic to make it to the rugby touchline.

Kate Middleton, who looks rather like Church, had a greater sense of fitness when she yelled her head off in the crowd of the England-Scotland Six Nations match. Conservative, loyal and incurious, rugby players make good husbands and fathers. That is why, whatever our health and safety reservations, we should be pleased for Gavin Henson and Charlotte Church.

More from Sarah Sands