Strange wedding gets stranger...
2008-06-08 14:27
Mossel Bay - Barely a week after Derrick Norman Matthee and Gail Brookstein said their I dos in the 2 Strangers and a Wedding competition, Matthee's skeleton has come out of his closet to haunt him.
A Mossel Bay woman, Ashley Michaels, has come forward claiming she was engaged to the pilot and had been living with him.
She claims that two days before Matthee vowed that only death would separate him from Brookstein, she had shared a bed with him.
Michaels says Matthee sent her packing. She claims that he stopped the car and slapped her twice en route to the airport, where she boarded a flight to Cape Town.
What goes around...
"I don't want to say anything more about this thing but all I know is that what goes around comes around," adds Michaels.
Matthee's colleagues at Denel in Centurion and his neighbours say they were shocked when they found out that he was the 2 Strangers and a Wedding
"We were with him and Ashley during our open day on April 27 and he introduced her to us as his wife. She even won a helicopter ride that day," says a colleague who did not want to be named.
A neighbour from Matthee's townhouse complex in Heuwelsig Estate, Centurion, says he saw Matthee with Michaels at Centurion Mall the weekend before he married Brookstein.
"I haven't seen Ashley since last Thursday and I know she had an engagement ring. I was wondering what had happened until I saw the pictures in the newspapers," he says.
Michaels says Matthee was still sending her SMSes after he was married, apologising to her for getting married to someone else.
Matthee's mother, Margaret Taylor, confirmed that she knew about Michaels but had refused to give her son permission to marry her.
Living together
Speaking from her Mossel Bay home in Extension 6, she says: "It was not a serious relationship. She was pushing Derrick to marry her. She was not a nice person ... she should go."
She says she knows Michaels' mother and was aware the couple had been living together in Pretoria.
She accuses Michaels of pushing Matthee away from his family.
"I am very happy Derrick married Gail. You can see she comes from a good home. She has never met me, but she already calls me Ma. You can see that she has been raised properly.
"My son is very soft-hearted; he would not hurt anyone ... I am glad he got married," she says.
She strongly believes Brookstein is the right woman for her son.
"Gail is the right woman for him. We believe this marriage can work," she says, weeping copiously.
The family is anxiously waiting for the couple to visit them next week, when they return from their honeymoon in Mozambique.
Charlene Deacon, managing director for Kaya FM, which ran the social experiment, says Matthee was very open with them and they had known about the engagement "but it was called off long before the competition started".
"We have no reason not to believe him and as far as we know they seem to be doing well. Gail is very supportive at this stage," says Deacon.
Speaking from Pemba Beach Resort in Mozambique, Matthee confirmed that he had been engaged to Michaels but they broke it off in December.
"Things didn't work out, my friends and family were complaining but I didn't have any reason to be enemies with her," says Matthee.
He says it was ridiculous of Michaels to say she didn't know about the experiment.
On a lighter note Matthee says he is happy with his new wife.
So, have they consummated the marriage?
"Of course we have, we are on our honeymoon."