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

[Hammock Parties]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...=feeds-newsxml

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.

'I've always wanted to be with a man like Lamin, but I never thought he existed,' she says. 'Daz took my self-confidence away and Lamin has slowly given me that back. He tells me I'm beautiful and that he loves me every day.'

While Michelle may be basking in her new relationship, the extent of her former husband's retribution was revealed last week when Plews, 44, a shop-fitter, was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay Michelle £5,000 in compensation, after admitting arson and theft.

Plews was a man scorned: he claimed his actions were triggered by the revelation that Michelle had married Lamin while she was still his wife.

Today, Michelle, a pretty blonde, admits that she is indeed now married to Lamin Dampha — who remains 3,000 miles away and has no immediate plans to join his new bride in England (they must meet stringent visa requirements for that to happen) — but insists the wedding took place after she had divorced Plews.

[Braincase]

6 kids? I'm surprised she didn't run off with Jonah Falcon.

[Garcia Bronco]

LOL@bitches.

[InChiefsHeaven]

Half Lamin! I want HALF!

[DMAC]

Same dress

[Skyy God]

34, really?

[suds79]

Originally Posted by Pittsie

34, really?

Yeah I think she started counting backwards at least a few years ago.

[Lumpy]

Originally Posted by Pittsie

34, really?

Hey now, I'm the same age.

She kind of looks like Jennifer Coolidge, (aka Stifler's mom).

[DaKCMan AP]

Once you go Gambian..

[vailpass]

Hey kids, Happy Kwanza!

[durtyrute]

Mandingo

[threebag]

Six kids. He must need a place to put the Caddy.

[DMAC]

She's crying in the first pic, and pissed off in the second.

Marriage remorse.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by DMAC

She's crying in the first pic, and pissed off in the second.

Marriage remorse.

Or AIDS.

[Frazod]

Some questions:

How the hell does a "shop-fitter" afford to buy his wife all that designer crap while raising six kids? And it must really suck having to pay for it twice. Or does she have a job making more than him? Or rich parents? And where are the kids? I'd be looking into getting a new identity, personally, but perhaps they still like her whore ass.

Lots of missing info here.