Meet The Woman Who Went For Holiday With Her Husband And Got Married To A Hotel Gardener

For a woman who owns little more than the clothes she stands up in, Michelle Dampha seems remarkably sanguine. Michelle's possessions — her clothes, her collection of costly designer handbags, her jewellery and even treasured photos of her children — have all been destroyed in a fire. But not just any old fire. 

The blaze was started by her ex-husband Darrell Plews, who made a vast bonfire of her belongings after she left him for another man. Michelle, 34, may have lost almost everything material, but what she has gained, she believes, is infinitely more valuable. 

For the mother-of-six from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, claims to have found true love in the form of impoverished Gambian gardener Lamin Dampha, 25, whom she met just seven months ago while on holiday with her former husband in Africa.

So convinced is Michelle that her love for Dampha is genuinely reciprocated, that she has married him in Gambia. Quite when they tied the knot remains an issue of contention. Plews believes Michelle was not yet divorced from him when she made her vows to Lamin. Michelle insists otherwise. 

Whatever the truth of the matter, Darrell Plews was estranged from Michelle and intent on revenge when he let himself into the semi-detached home they once shared — while she sunbathed, oblivious, on a Gambian beach — and piled all her possessions into a giant pyre in the garden.

Onto it he threw 50 handbags and more than 50 pairs of shoes by designers including Gucci, Jimmy Choo and Vivienne Westwood. Then he doused it in petrol, lit a match and watched it blaze for the next five hours. 

When Michelle arrived home four days later, it was as if every scrap of evidence that she had ever lived there had been erased. 'Every single thing down to my last pair of knickers, my last earring, photos of the kids, college work, things that were irreplaceable, was gone. It was as if I never existed,' she says.

 'All I had left was what was in the suitcase I'd taken with me,' she adds. She breaks into a smile as she looks at her £700 Gucci handbag. 'I had this with me, too, and it's the only bag I've got left.' 

A pink Jimmy Choo purse, a Tiffany bangle and necklace, a Gucci bracelet and some rings also escaped, because Michelle was wearing them at the time. One thing she does have, however, is a man who, she claims, is everything her ex-husband is not.