£4m winner says: It’s payback time for pals
A TAXI driver so broke she turned to online fundraising for much-needed dentistry said it’s now “payback time” for those who helped after she won £4million on a scratchcard.
But Melissa Ede, 57, has no plans to treat her four grown-up children after losing contact with them when she transitioned from a man.
Instead Melissa, formerly known as Les, plans to buy a £500,000 six-bedroom house with a swimming pool for her fiancee Rachel Nason, 37, and her five young kids.
The millionaire, who proposed to paranormal investigator Rachel just three days before her big win, will also splash out on a £47,000 Mercedes people carrier.
She said: “I need a big house for my fiancee and children.
“Those children will get their dreams… a bedroom each.”
Of her own children, aged 19, 29, 30 and 39, she said: “For the last 12 to 14 years I have been Melissa but where have they been? They have not been with me.
“If they’d have come to me before Christmas and said, ‘Dad I want you back in my life’, it would have been a dream come true.
“Now if they come and say that, it’s going to be like, ‘They only want my money’.”
The cabbie, who suffers from gum disease, said she was also going to treat the 26 people who raised £315 of the £15,000 target she had set to get new teeth via a GoFundMe page.
“The people who’ve stood by me through thick and thin – it’s payback time for them too,” she said.
She has already quit her job after working 16-hour days for 25 years in Hull, East Yorks.
And she has quit the cramped room in a shared house where she has lived for 15 years, so poor that some days she had to survive on just a bowl of cornflakes.
Melissa has previously auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent and is currently featuring in Das Supertalent, a German talent show.
She has also been on Judge Rinder, with another appearance due out soon, as well as on The Jeremy Kyle Show, where DNA proved she was not the biological dad of her youngest child.
Melissa, who bought a £10 scratchcard instead of a pack of cigarettes on the spur of the moment from a Jet garage on December 30, said her incredible win was a “miracle”.
Now she will splash out on some new teeth, and said: “I’m going to make every single day count. People thought Lady Gaga was strange.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”