Benedict Cumberbatch on why he decided to announce his engagement in the paper

Benedict Cumberbatch announced his engagement last week causing our actual eyeballs to pop out of our head and flow over the floor on a cascade of tears, flooding heat Towers.

But now we’ve had time to recover, we actually quite like the way he broke the news – a notice was placed in the social column of The Times newspaper.

The message read: “MR B.T. CUMBERBATCH AND MISS S.I. HUNTER. The engagement is announced between Benedict, son of Wanda and Timothy Cumberbatch of London, and Sophie, daughter of Katherine Hunter of Edinburgh and Charles Hunter of London.”

The actor has now revealed why he chose to follow the somewhat old-fashioned tradition of posting a notice in the paper when other celebrities simply bash out a few words on Twitter.

He told USA Today: “It’s what I would have done if I wasn’t famous. It’s a normal thing to do in my country.

“It was a way of telling our friends, who we hadn’t been able to tell before, [they saw] some grainy shot of a ring on her finger.”

Benedict appears to have started a trend for famous folk announcing their happy news in the paper as former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell did the same today when she revealed she was engaged to Formula One team boss Christian Horner.

The message read: “MR C.E.J. HORNER OBE AND MISS G.E. HALLIWELL. The engagement is announced between Christian, son of Mr and Mrs G.M. Horner and Geraldine, daughter of the late Mr L.F. Halliwell and Mrs A. Parkinson.”

But Gezza is totes with the times as she later shouted the happy news, with her fingers, as she typed a message out on Twitter.

She wrote: “Christian and I are delighted to announce that we are engaged! We’re both very happy!”

Congrats, erm, everyone!

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