Ken Livingstone to say ‘I zoo’ at newt nuptials

The Evening Standard can reveal that the former mayor and Ms Beal will exchange vows in the zoo's Mappin Pavilion, surrounded by wallabies and emus. This will bring back memories of the couple's first foreign holiday, in Australia in 2002.

As a bonus, the pavilion is located next to the reptile house - Mr Livingstone has a fascination for reptiles and newts dating back to his school days - and the Komodo dragon enclosure.

Guests will be able to explore the zoo's enclosures free of charge after the civil ceremony. Mr Livingstone, who has a pet chameleon called Harry for his two youngest children, confirmed that he had booked the zoo for his nuptials.

Prior to becoming Mayor in 2000 he was a vice-president of the zoo's parent company, the Zoological Society for London, and in his first job application unsuccessfully sought to become a zookeeper.

Mr Livingstone told the Standard: "We are getting married and it will be in London Zoo. It's not a media event - if you try and get in I will set the gorillas on you. We have been looking to get married for years. We decided to do it when we had time, and this seems to be the ideal period."

One of his first acts in office was to offer London schoolchildren free visits to the zoo. He has said that, had he not been a politician, he would have "loved to have been David Attenborough".

Mr Livingstone, 64, was revealed last year to be the father of five children. Previously, only his two children with Ms Beal - Thomas, six, and Mia, five - were known about.

The existence of the three elder children he had with two other women - a son now aged around 17 and two younger teenage girls - emerged during last year's mayoral elections. Mr Livingstone, who was subsequently defeated by Tory Mr Johnson, famously said that Londoners were not shocked by other people's sex lives "as long as it doesn't involve children, animals or vegetables".

Mr Livingstone said: "Given you have lots of young kids running around, a wedding can be quite boring for young kids. But they can go and look at the animals. I know the place - I just like it. "

Mr Livingstone, who hopes to run against Mr Johnson in 2012 and regain the mayoralty in time for the London Olympics, first met Ms Beal in 1996 when he was an Evening Standard restaurant critic and she worked on ES Magazine. Ms Beal, 41, went on to work at City Hall for Mr Livingstone.

The former mayor has been married once before, to teacher Christine Chapman. Prior to meeting Ms Beal he had a long relationship with Kate Allen, of Amnesty International. They split in 2001.

Mr Livingstone's best man will be Simon Fletcher, his former chief of staff at City Hall. Mr Fletcher chose his then boss as best man when he married in 2006.

Francesca Moore, spokeswoman for hitched.co.uk, an online wedding guide, said London Zoo was one of the capital's most unusual places to get married.

She said: "The experience of getting married surrounded by over 5,000 animals would be a memory not to be forgotten."