How not to propose - it's a movie idea

When The Big Bang Theory's Simon Helberg got close to proposing to his wife, Jocelyn Towne, he panicked and broke up with her instead. She took off to Paris and he desperately went after her to try and salvage their relationship. Together, the couple have turned what could have been the biggest mistake of the sitcom star's life into a romantic comedy, We'll Never Have Paris, with Helberg as the lead, co-director and writer. And it's being shown ahead of its British general release at the UK Jewish Film Festival.

Helberg admits that he blocked out concerns about damaging his relationship with Towne when he decided to mine their pain for laughs.

"I felt we had gotten to a place that could handle that kind of thing," he says. "But as in all of the events of the movie, I didn't handle it in the best way."

By the time he revealed his plans to Towne, Helberg had already told various outsiders about how things had unfolded after "the most horrific proposal on the face of the earth". She was horrified.