Mother of six insists she has no regrets over affair with hotel gardener

Angry: Michelle's first husband Darrell Plews was so upset that his wife was having an affair her burned all her possessions

For a woman who owns little more than the clothes she stands up in, Michelle Dampha seems remarkably sanguine.

Michelle Plews on her wedding day to Gambian gardener Lamin Dampha last month

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.