£148m lottery winner who’s proof money can’t buy you love
As his stable girl lover runs back to her penniless ex (taking £300k of thoroughbred horses with her), the full story behind the . . .
FROM the moment they first clapped eyes on each other across the saloon bar of The Cock Inn, it appeared to be love at first sight for Samantha Burbidge and Adrian Bayford. Who knows what first attracted the jobbing stable girl to the lottery squillionaire?
But just two weeks after meeting at the charming 17th century coaching inn in February 2014, former postman Adrian whisked horse-mad Samantha away to a £500-a-night resort in the Maldives where he proposed during a candlelit dinner on a beach lapped by the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean.
When they returned, Samantha quit her role as head groom of a stables in nearby Thurlow, Suffolk, and moved into Adrian’s £6million Grade IIlisted country estate in nearby Haverhill in Cambridgeshire.
So far, so Cinderella. But this week it emerged that three years into their engagement, 29-year-old Sammy has ditched her 46-year-old uber-wealthy fiance and trotted off with a penniless former boyfriend.
She took with her the £300,000 worth of thoroughbred horses given to her by kind-hearted Adrian during their romance, a £100,000 horse box, as well as a £30,000 Mercedes sports car and two black labradors, according to reports.
More in a moment of equine-mad Samantha and the bankrupt Essex car sprayer who has stolen her heart.
For her departure is the latest in a series of misfortunes to befall both Adrian and his former wife, Scotsborn Gillian, who famously shared a record-breaking £148 million EuroMillions win in August 2012 before separating 15 months later after nine years of marriage.
Gillian promptly returned to her native Dundee with the couple’s two children and found love with car salesman Alan Warnock.
While, after a couple of months as a single man, Adrian, who runs a film and music memorabilia store in Cambridge, also appeared to have hit the romantic jackpot when he embarked on a relationship with super-fit Samantha.
In the months that followed, he lavished her with gifts including expensive perfumes, designer riding gear, clothes and shoes, not to mention two engagement rings.
She lost the first, an eye-catching square-cut diamond, which was replaced, at Samantha’s request, with a smaller ring.
And as well as the 30 or so horses he bought her, along with three stateof-the-art horse boxes to drive them around in, he also splashed out £2million on an equestrian centre in Swaffham, Norfolk, paid for the stable staff she hired and gave her a monthly allowance.
The pair were even said to be planning a James Bond-themed wedding in which Adrian was to walk down the aisle in a white tuxedo, similar to the one worn by 007’s arch-enemy Francisco Scaramanga.
So what on earth could have gone wrong? A friend told the Mail this week that while Adrian’s vast wealth had initially dazzled amateur showjumper Samantha and transformed her overnight from stable maid to chatelaine, she found life in his seven-bedroom mansion increasingly lonely.
‘She was like a fly caught in a spider’s web and she didn’t know how to get out of it,’ said the friend.
‘She had everything she could ever want but, without love, it was as if she had nothing. For a long time she was in so deep, she felt she couldn’t walk away.’
THE pair were said to have spent increasing amounts of time apart, with Samantha making frequent trips away to horse shows and competitions, while Adrian travelled alone to visit his two children north of the Border.
Into this romantic void stepped Samantha’s ex-boyfriend Alan Suckling, a 39-year-old divorced father-of-four.
The pair, who previously dated in 2013, are believed to share a love of West Ham football club and ‘drum and bass’ music, and are said to have stayed in touch throughout Samantha’s relationship with Adrian.
They were spotted together in the car park of the Old Red Lion in Horseheath in December — not long before it came to light that Samantha had broken up with Adrian and moved back to her mother’s home in Essex.
She went back to Adrian just before Christmas and then, a couple of weeks ago, decided to leave again.
But according to one of Mr Suckling’s own family members, he is unlikely to be the ‘happy ever after’ that Samantha is looking for. The relative told the Mail this week: ‘He’s left a trail wherever he goes. He’s been bankrupt. All of it. He’s someone you wouldn’t want to come across. It’s a sad state of affairs.’
According to the relative, Mr Suckling has recently been living with his parents in Romford and has no property of his own.
Certainly, it’s all a world away from the early days of Samantha’s relationship with Adrian when, according to the friend who spoke to the Mail, ‘they were all over each other’.
BUT looking back, there were signs, even then, that things were rather more complicated than their whirlwind romance suggested.
Not long after they announced their engagement, another woman revealed that Adrian had also proposed to her — just two days before asking Samantha to marry him.
Marta Jarosz, a trained bodyguard and martial arts expert from Poland, met Adrian while she was working on the door at his local pub in December 2013, a month after his split from wife Gillian.
After telling Ms Jarosz about his lottery win, he offered her a job and in January employed her as his bodyguard, personal assistant and, because he cannot drive, his chauffeur. He paid her £1,200-a-month plus expenses and bought her a £34,000 Volvo to drive him around in.
But, aware that Adrian’s feelings for her were more than professional, she refused to accompany him on a trip to the Maldives and he took Samantha instead. But while away, he continued to text Ms Jarosz, telling her: ‘I want you’ and ‘I would marry you no probs’.
Two days after making it clear she didn’t feel the same, Ms Jarosz received another text saying: ‘Sam and I now engaged.’
‘Adrian was a bit lonely and desperate,’ said Marta, who was sacked after Adrian and Samantha returned from the Maldives.
If Samantha was indeed second choice for the trip, she did not seem to mind, for as soon as she arrived back from her luxury holiday, she posted several happy photographs of herself online, standing on a sandy beach and posing in a bikini on the prow of a chartered boat — although none with Adrian.
At first, she seemed to be happy living at Adrian’s Georgian country house, which was built in 1815 for a racehorse trainer and has extensive outbuildings and nearly 200 acres of rolling grassland, perfect for keeping horses. As an accomplished and enthusiastic cook, she also had the run of the estate’s fabulous kitchen.
But, says the friend who spoke to the Mail, the pair had little in common and were soon spending increasing amounts of time apart, with Samantha travelling around the UK and abroad to Spain, Ireland and
Australia for showjumping competitions and to buy horses.
‘Adrian never used to go with her,’ says the friend. ‘He had no interest in horses and she wasn’t interested in being a housewife. She didn’t really get involved with his children. She preferred horses to children.
‘It seemed as if they never did anything together, apart from going to the pub or going for the odd meal out.
The relationship also appears to have become increasingly onesided. ‘If she said jump, then Adrian jumped,’ said the friend. ‘He was madly in love with her.’
On Facebook, where Samantha frequently posted photographs of herself riding her horses, Adrian left adoring messages, referring to her as ‘baby’ and ‘darling’ and, when others praised her, writing: ‘She’s mine haha.’
Behind the scenes, however, says the friend, the relationship began to show signs of strain.
‘They were spending so much time apart. Adrian was often rattling around at home alone. Things seemed to get cooler between them. I said ages ago that it wouldn’t last.
‘You could just tell that Samantha wasn’t in love with him. I think it made her very lonely. To be honest, I’m surprised she waited so long to leave.’
Samantha finally ended the relationship last month. And while Adrian was in Scotland visiting Gillian and their two children, aged eight and ten, she returned to his mansion to take the horses, vehicles and the dogs.
Adrian’s love split is just the latest misfortune to beset the Bayfords since their mammoth lottery win in 2012. This, despite their claim that it would make their lives ‘much more enjoyable and stress-free’.
Last year, Gillian, who lives in a £750,000 house near Dundee and manages a buy-to-let property empire in Carnoustie, Angus, fell out with her parents, Ian and Brenda McCulloch, claiming that they were ‘demanding and greedy’, despite being given £20 million.
They, however, insisted that they had only been given £1million and that their daughter was ‘vicious and manipulative’.
Gillian also had a run-in with staff at the Sugar and Spice cafe near Arbroath Harbour, which she bought and closed down in April last year amid claims she was offering only a £100 pay-off to some of the workers.
Adrian, meanwhile, claimed he was forced to shut down his secondhand record shop in Haverhill after being swamped by begging letters.
He also had a falling out with a former friend who lived and worked on his estate after putting her rent up by £250 a month. Adrian claimed the rent was still well below what it should have been.
‘The money’s brought so much misery,’ said the friend. ‘Money changes people. Sometimes, you can’t help but feel Adrian and Gillian would have been better off without it.’
Perhaps the biggest irony of all is that while their vast fortune has undoubtedly affected their relationships with friends and family, Gillian and Adrian have remained utterly loyal to each other, sharing their children amicably and often speaking out in each other’s defence.
Gillian told the Mail this week: ‘I speak to Adrian every day. The kids see their dad regularly either up here in Scotland or down at his place.’
But she added that while she and car dealer Alan are still engaged, no date has yet been set for a wedding.
What the future now holds for Adrian Bayford remains to be seen. According to the friend who spoke to the Mail: ‘He doesn’t like being alone.’
Indeed, despite winning a sum of money which places him on a financial par with the likes of Jamie Oliver and Ringo Starr, he could be forgiven for hankering for the days when he shared a modest threebedroom house in Haverhill with Gillian and their children.
‘He’s a lovely, lovely guy. It’s so sad this has happened,’ said the friend. ‘The irony is that he was much happier before he won the money.
‘I think if he could go back in time he would. If ever there was lesson that money doesn’t buy you happiness, this is it.’