LAST week, I read that Sacha Baron Cohen's fiancee, Isla Fisher, is converting to Judaism before her wedding to the Ali G creator because she respects his Jewish roots.

The story made me coo, how sweet and romantic, I thought, and a stark contrast to my bitter experience of trying to get my ex-boyfriend to become more of a Muslim before he married me.

When I say Muslim, I mean it in the loosest of ways. We had been going out for a long time without my Muslim parents realising I was a filthy sinner. We even fitted in weekends away and cohabiting for eight months without my parents having an inkling.

But four years on, we both got fed up of leading the glamorous double life so he urged me to tell my parents that I had a special friend who I wanted to marry. When I told them he was a lapsed Anglican-cum-robust-atheist, they stared in uncomprehending silence. Their long wait to see their daughter happily in love had ended but God, in what terrible, irreligious circumstances. I wondered if they would have been happier if I'd said I was a lesbian, as long as my special lady had been a fellow Muslim.

Anyway, they went through the motions and invited him to our house for a stiff session of afternoon tea, silence all round. I had always been of the view that culture and religion didn't matter as long as you were in love. My boyfriend and I had everything in common and it was only now I saw how the differences were bigger than us.

At the next meeting, a hideous change took over my parents. We arrived at their home for lunch, only to be greeted by my mother draped in a black burqa and resembling the angel of death. My mother, usually comfortable in M&S cotton trousers in tropical colours, was looking like a fanatic. She suddenly lost the ability to understand English and went from being a bossy, forthright individual to a devout Muslim, rocking in a chair with rosary beads in hand. My father held up his end and did his utmost to bring the Quran into any conversation.

This was my parents' way of asserting their cultural difference and religious tradition, and it set me thinking about how to please both them and myself. The only way I would get their blessing was if my boyfriend went through a five-minute conversion to Islam ceremony - something he had been talking about just days before he met my preaching parents.

I went to see the man at the local mosque who assured me that it would be a swift ceremony and I saw it as the beginning of our happy ending together. But unlike Sacha Baron Cohen's lover, mine would do anything for love, but just not that. He fled, with a terrified look in his eyes. The last memorable thing I remember him saying was that he just wanted a girlfriend who was a little more normal.