SCOTT SIMON, host: If you're listening to our show in London over NPR Worldwide, 107.8 FM, look up in the sky. You could help out Lakos Hodgy(ph). Mr. Hodgy, a 28-year-old floor installer from Hackney, East London, is looking for a novel way to pop the question to his girlfriend Liane. So he purchased a $12,000-engagement ring and placed it in a helium balloon so that she could pop the balloon, reveal the ring, he could ask her to marry him.</s>SCOTT SIMON, host: As Mr. Hodgy left the shop, a stout wind lifted the balloon right out of his hand and soared into the sky. I felt like such a ponker(ph), he said. It cost a fortune, and I knew my girlfriend would kill me. Mr. Hodgy then spent two hours driving around London searching for the balloon but to no avail. What was he going to do anyway? Have the Royal Air Force shoot down a balloon.</s>SCOTT SIMON, host: Mr. Hodgy told The Sun newspaper that his fiancee, or at least the woman he wanted to be his fiancee may have entertained second thoughts about marrying the kind of man who'd put a $12,000-ring into a helium balloon. She went absolutely mad, he said, now she refuses to speak to me until I get her a new ring.
A would-be fiance in London concocted an elaborate plan to propose to his girlfriend — he put the ring into a balloon so he could "pop" the question. Unfortunately, a gust of wind blew the balloon — and the ring — out of his hand before he got the chance.