Pregnant Vick Hope displays her baby bump in a colourful bikini while holidaying with husband Calvin Harris at their sprawling 138-acre Ibiza farm
After leaving her BBC Radio 1 show on maternity leave a couple of months ago, the radio presenter, 35, and her DJ spouse, 41, are preparing to welcome their first child.
In the meantime they're spending some time away at their 138-acre farm called Terra Masia, with Vick sharing snaps from the sun-soaked getaway to her Instagram.
Captioning the slew 'june bloom', the TV personality looked every inch the glowing mother-to-be as she gazed down at her bump while sporting a bikini top.
She also posed for a photo on the beach, cracking a smile for the camera after slipping into a white summer dress.
The compilation also revealed that the couple were joined by pals on the Spanish island, with Vick cradling her bump in one photo while stood arm-in-arm with some friends.
The radio presenter, 35, announced she was pregnant with her DJ husband's child during an appearance on her BBC Breakfast show in May (pictured March 2025)
Vick confirmed rumours that she was pregnant live on her BBC radio show in May, letting her listeners know that she would soon be leaving on maternity leave.
During a conversation with co-host Jamie Laing, she revealed: 'I should probably also say this is my final week before I go on maternity leave.'
Jamie told her: 'You're an amazing friend, an amazing person, and you're just going to be an amazing mum.' She replied: 'Oh, thank you.'
A few weeks later while on stage at Radio 1's Big Weekend, Vick and Jamie curiously asked the thousands of supporters in the crowd for baby name suggestions.
Addressing the audience, Jamie said: 'Vick is about to go on maternity leave, and she wants some help with some baby names, so if you can shout some names to me.'
As the huge crowd began screaming out suggestions a giggling Vick replied: 'Ok, I got it.'
Whenever Calvin and Vick's baby is born, they will likely be raised at the couple's sprawling Gloucestershire mansion.
The Scottish-born DJ has reportedly transformed a sleepy village in the county into his own multi-million-pound countryside empire snapping up homes left, right and centre.
The One Kiss hitmaker, worth an eye-watering £250million, is set to move into a stunning new five-bed mansion with his pregnant wife later this summer.
Calvin is thought to have already bought two neighbouring homes and is eyeing up a third, bringing his total spend in the area to an estimated £15million.
One local told The Sun: 'Building work there finally finished, for now, last week and we're expecting Calvin and Vick to move in at the end of the summer after his season playing at clubs in Ibiza has finished. From the road, the house looks amazing.
'No expense seems to have been spared. I am sure they will love living here as a family.'
The move mirrors Ed Sheeran's infamous creation of 'Sheeranville' in Suffolk, with Calvin now following suit by transforming the sleepy village of just 700 people.
Another resident said: 'Just like Ed Sheeran, he seems to want to buy up the properties that surround his incredible new house.
'We have had to put up with lots of building work going on, for what seems like years but what has annoyed locals most is that a lovely vineyard has gone.'
Alongside the main mansion, originally bought in 2019 for £3.6million, which was flattened and rebuilt from scratch, it is thought Calvin also snapped up a six-bedroom property with a three-acre vineyard for £3.6 million, although he insisted the vines be ripped out.
The plush pad, made from classic honey-coloured Cotswold stone, features five bedrooms, a swimming pool and tennis court.
Other locals joked that the local pub could be next on his list - and suggested the chart-topper might even treat residents to a DJ set.
Calvin, who once worked in a fish factory and stacked shelves at Safeway to buy his first decks, has since topped charts with 11 UK No1s and raked in millions from a Las Vegas residency.
Ever since he sold his song catalogue in 2020 for a reported £76million and has invested heavily in property ever since.
The new mansion features a series of large ground floor rooms including kitchen, dining room and TV snug.
Already the owner of a £12million mansion in LA, a £7.5million London townhouse, and a 138-acre farm in Ibiza, Calvin appears to have found his UK base in the Cotswolds, alongside celebrity neighbours like the Beckhams, Kate Moss, and Jeremy Clarkson.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Women have more power than they think': self-help superstar Mel Robbins on success, survival and silencing her critics
'Putting yourself in this room today,' booms Mel Robbins from the stage of a sold-out London theatre, 'is a decision that's going to change the trajectory of your life.' Rows and rows of (almost exclusively) women gaze at the podcaster and self-help superstar, her image on a huge screen behind her. It's the final day of Robbins's first tour, this one to promote her latest book and viral sensation, The Let Them Theory – her tool for helping people detach from other people's dramas. Outside forces, she teaches, from annoying relatives to strangers in a traffic jam, are not in your control; nor are you responsible for what they do, feel or think (so long as they are not your children). It's a waste of time, energy and emotion to even try. Instead, you should just say to yourself: 'Let them.' Robbins is bounding around, sparkling with charisma and no-nonsense charm, first in a comfy tracksuit (available from her website for £150), then in boss-lady blazer and sexy denim. For nearly two hours, she commands the stage – occasionally joined by her two grown-up daughters, one of whom, Sawyer, is the book's co-author – and the women in the audience smile, nod, hug each other and cry. By the finale, when the confetti cannons go off and yellow ribbons rain down to Coldplay's booming A Sky Full of Stars, I have promised myself I will (in no particular order) lose my perimenopause tummy, be nicer to my children and care less what other people think. I am, I decide, beaming to myself, ready to change the trajectory of my life. Three days before I was fully indoctrinated into the cult of Mel Robbins, when I still had some semblance of cynicism and didn't have phrases such as 'You have everything you need inside you to make it' flashing across my brain like ticker tape, I meet her in a London cafe. Robbins has flown in this morning, but you wouldn't know it. The qualities that make her such a good podcast host – warmth, energy, humour – are intense in person. People, she argues, mostly need encouragement. 'I think that's the number one thing in people's way,' she says, untouched iced coffee in front of her. 'This sense of discouragement: my life is fucked, so nothing I do is going to matter, or I'm too old, or I'm too late, or too this.' This is where Robbins comes in, and it seems to work. The 56-year-old has a huge, cultish following. Her podcast has had more than 200m downloads, she has 10m Instagram followers and Let Them has sold 5m copies since it was published in December. She has celebrity stans, including Chrissy Teigen and Davina McCall, who called her the 'queen of beginning again'. Oprah has anointed her, saying, 'I have over the years read probably thousands of books. And Let Them is by far just one of the best self-help books I've ever read. It is right up there with all the greats … saying everything I was trying to say for 25 years.' If you have spent any time on Instagram, Robbins will probably have been served up to you at some point, face framed by blond hair and heavy-rimmed black glasses, to dispense some no-nonsense advice. Someone may have sent you one of her podcast episodes, in which she interviews renowned doctors and professors, such as the Harvard psychiatrist and happiness expert Robert Waldinger or the orthopaedic surgeon Vonda Wright (though not all guests are so rational – at least one medium has appeared). Other shows might find Robbins spending an easy hour talking about herself and the lessons she has learned about everything from diet and relationships to boosting confidence and setting boundaries. Even if you don't know her name, you have probably been touched by her rules for empowered life. Maybe people have begun saying 'let them' around you when they're frustrated by friends' behaviour, or used the five-second rule (counting down from five before doing something uncomfortable) or high-fiving themselves in the mirror before breakfast – blame Robbins for all of that. She is the ultimate in personal brand-building – a lawyer turned motivational speaker who, according to legend, dragged herself out of an $800,000 debt to become a star of the advice economy in her 50s. She wanted to do the tour, she says, to look her audience in the eye. 'It's just a reminder that who I'm reaching are normal people trying to get up every day and do a little better. I'm not trying to reach people who want to be billionaires.' Does she feel like a rock star, soaking up the adulation? 'I don't think about that,' she insists. 'When you have something this extraordinary happen this late in life, you're very clear about what matters – my family and my friends, and I'm mostly driven by the impact that I can make.' Self-development is huge, from questionable wellbeing influencers to any number of writers and podcasters exploring what it takes to be healthy, happy and successful. What does it say about us, in the affluent west, that we all crave it? Are we all narcissists? 'No,' Robbins says with a smile, 'but we all have that self-centredness. I personally feel we're so overoptimised for productivity, but what I also hope happens is that, in listening to podcasts and reading this book, you're reminded of what's actually important to you. Most of us focus on the wrong things for too long, and then we realise we didn't spend the time we wish we had with our parents while they were here, and we realise we worked too many late nights at work and we didn't spend time with our pets or our friends.' Is all this advice, overwhelmingly aimed at women, just another way to make them feel they need more, or to change, or be perfect? Robbins brushes over the question, saying, 'I guess what I want women in particular to know is you have more power than you think.' She is sometimes criticised for not being a qualified psychologist or therapist, or for dispensing obvious or age-old advice, but that is to miss her talent – she has an ability in the way she distils and communicates information to mainline it straight to your brain. I know, because for years I've had her voice in my head in a way that few other wellbeing podcasters – and I've listened to them all at some point – take up residence. Robbins acknowledges that her insights aren't necessarily new. 'Everybody has said 'let them' a bazillion times,' she says. 'This is stoicism. It's radical acceptance. It's the serenity prayer.' What is it about her saying it that makes people listen? She ponders for a second. 'I think this is a moment. I've said to our team: we never would have been able to orchestrate something as extraordinary as the timing of this – a modern twist on a timeless rule of life, for a moment where it feels like the Earth is spinning off its axis. All of the things that have lined up, I don't feel that it's me; I feel in service of something bigger.' As a child growing up in Michigan, Robbins wanted to be a doctor like her father (her mother ran a kitchenware shop). Was she a confident teenager? 'I think people who knew me would say yes. What I would say is I was deeply anxious and insecure.' Her anxiety made her driven, she thinks, 'but I wouldn't call it confidence'. She 'barely made it through' law school – she had undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD – but thrived in mock trials and oral argument. For three years, Robbins worked as a legal-aid criminal-defence lawyer in Manhattan, representing people who couldn't afford to pay for representation. It taught her to develop intimacy fast. 'The job is actually about trust, and building trust with somebody that didn't pick you.' And it exposed her to people who had had extremely difficult lives. It was around the time New York City was being cleaned up, and with so many petty arrests to process, Robbins would often work in the night court. 'When you're representing somebody in a bail hearing, one of the things the judge considers is ties to community. Night after night, I would go into that courtroom, and I would call out for family or friends for this person, and no one was there. It broke my heart.' Later, it would be the reason she ends her podcast with the words: 'In case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you I love you.' By this time, Robbins had met her husband, Chris. When he got a place at business school in Boston, they moved. 'I went to a large law firm and wanted to die,' she says. With four weeks of her maternity leave with her first child left, she reveals, 'I had a mental breakdown and said, 'I'm not doing that any more.' An interesting thing about human beings is that when you have a defined problem, most of us are good at solving it. I found a new job the night before I was supposed to go back.' For the next few years, Robbins worked for tech startups and digital marketers, and wondered what to do with her life, so she hired a life coach, who suggested that actually Robbins would make a good coach herself. She loved it, and was good at it. She started a daily call-in radio show, Make It Happen With Mel Robbins, and a newspaper column, and was already laying the foundations of her empire: there was a development deal with Disney, and books and a talkshow planned. In a 2007 magazine profile, Robbins, then in her late 30s, sounds hyper, talking up everything about herself – her sex life and marriage, her body, her work. Call it hubris. Within a couple of years her husband's business was struggling, leaving them $800,000 in debt. How did she cope? 'I wanted to kill him. I'm serious. I wanted to absolutely kill him. Those moments when things go off the rails in your life, it's easier to be angry than it is to be afraid, and I could tell he was afraid, which just made me even angrier, because I felt fearful that we'd never get out of the situation.' She felt incapacitated for about six months, she says. 'I drank myself into the ground. I was a bitch every time he was around. I withdrew from my friends. I didn't tell my parents what was going on.' She lost a long-term coaching job. 'I felt, how can I possibly give anybody advice when my life looks like this? I'm not even an impostor; I'm just a liar. And so my whole life kind of collapsed.' Blame seemed the obvious response. 'And then you avoid doing what you really could be doing. It goes back to what we were talking about: discouragement. I believed at that moment, at 41 with three kids under the age of 10, and liens on the house and no income coming in, that I would never get out of this.' It was in this state, slumped in front of the TV and seeing an advert that used images of a rocket launch, that Robbins had the idea that, instead of staying in bed the next morning, she would count down from five and launch herself out of it. It worked for other things – the idea being that if you give yourself more than five seconds, you will talk yourself out of doing something difficult or hard. In 2011, Robbins, who was still earning a living as a coach and motivational speaker, and had just published her first book, Stop Saying You're Fine, was invited by a friend to speak at a Tedx event in San Francisco. 'That was like a 21-minute-long panic attack,' she says with a laugh. She didn't intend to make her 'five-second rule' a thing, but she blurted it out towards the end. The video went viral (it has now had more than 33m views), then she published her second book, based on the 'rule', in 2017. Her next book, The High 5 Habit – essentially, high-five yourself in the mirror in the morning, setting a plan for the day, boosting confidence and silencing your inner critic – became a bestseller, and in 2022 Robbins launched her podcast. It's in this arena that Robbins, by talking about overcoming adversity, feels infinitely more relatable. In her episodes on trauma, she has described being sexually abused by an older child while on a family holiday, around the age of 10. She has also talked about the impact of getting a later-life ADHD diagnosis, and issues her husband and three children have gone through; part of her live show is about how she improved her relationship with her eldest child. How does she feel about using her personal life and trauma in her work? 'It's easier than hiding it,' she says. 'So many of us are putting on a front, yet every one of us is going through something. I feel that sharing, like any good friend does with another friend – that's a way to make all of this scientific research relatable and understandable.' When she's more open or vulnerable, is listener engagement greater? 'Here's what I do know – the uglier I look on social, the better the content does,' she says with a laugh. 'I don't even think about it as being vulnerable. To me, it's just easier to be honest. When you feel like you can't disclose something, you're judging yourself. Being free with your history and what you've learned from it means you don't judge, and you don't have shame around what's happened to you.' If Robbins was successful before, her Let Them theory has taken that to another level. Essentially, it's simple: if you spend too much time worrying about what other people do or say, which you can't control anyway, you're giving them too much power. Focus on yourself. It isn't about being a doormat, or about resignation, she says. 'When you say, 'let them', you're not allowing anybody to do anything. You're recognising what people are doing, and what's in your control and what's not.' This is only the first stage in the process. One problem with saying 'let them', she acknowledges, is that it can put you in a position of judgment and superiority. 'That's why it works, because when you feel superior, that unhooks you from the frustration or hurt you may feel.' But if that's all you do, she warns, you can end up isolating yourself. 'At some point you've got to use the 'let me' part. I think what keeps you from becoming an asshole and cutting people out of your life is: let me decide what I'm going to do in response.' Maybe that will be accepting you're the sibling who always checks in, or the friend who invariably makes the plans. 'Maybe, conversely, you're going to realise: I've been chasing these people all this time; they don't give me anything in return. Is this what I deserve? Maybe I should pour my time into creating other types of relationships.' That's the harder part. But, Robbins adds, 'If all people want to do is say, 'let them', then let them.' How has her theory changed her life? 'I had no idea how much I allowed the outside world and meaningless bullshit to penetrate me and my peace, whether it was traffic or people walking slowly, or somebody who didn't text me back when I thought they should, or somebody's mood.' Applying her tactic helped, she says, 'to let them have their emotions and opinions, and then remind myself: what do I want to think about this? What do I want or not want to do?'. Robbins's style can be quite tough. 'You think I'm tough?' Forthright, then. 'I think I'm honest,' she says. In her book, she writes that, if you're stuck in a job you hate, 'the harsh truth is you're the one to blame – because you are choosing to stay in a job that makes you miserable'. Doesn't that underestimate the reality for people who don't have the privilege of walking into another job? 'You always have options,' Robbins says. 'You may not have options tomorrow, but you have options. Even if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you are sleeping on a friend's couch, if you believe there are no other options, you won't look for them. It is important to recognise that, with time and consistent effort, you can create different options.' We're in a moment, she says, 'where the headlines are terrifying, economies are faltering, AI is coming, jobs are redundant. You don't know if you're going to get laid off.' That's beyond your control, she says. 'Say: let them lay you off. You're recognising it could happen, and reminding yourself to not waste time and energy worrying, feeling like a loser, feeling like you've got no options. So let me, every day after work, spend an hour getting my résumé together, networking and doing what I need to do to build skills. You will feel empowered when you focus on what's in your control, and what's in your control is what you put your time and energy into.' It can be applied to big or small things. Robbins describes herself as a 'very political person'. 'If we're ever going to get things back on track in terms of people feeling stability and peace and support, you can't burn through all your energy feeling powerless. You've got to remind yourself: I actually have the power to change this. If it bothers me, the more energy I spend arguing about it and venting about it, the less time I'm spending getting myself organised to change this.' With Robbins's increased success and profile has come, inevitably, more criticism. How does she deal with that? 'Let them,' she says instantly. Does it not hurt when she reads horrible comments about herself online? 'No.' She doesn't look, anyway – people who are intent on misunderstanding aren't her problem, she adds. Does she think male podcasters get an easier time? 'Yes – no question. Absolutely.' One of the persistent allegations is that Robbins plagiarised 'let them' from a poem that went viral in 2022. She has always said she hadn't seen the poem and her inspiration came from the night she was trying to micromanage her 18-year-old son's school prom, and her middle child, her daughter Kendall, told her in a moment of exasperation to 'let them' – get soaked in the rain, have tacos if they want them, just let them. 'Anybody that can't see that a poem is very different than a book that makes a case for a theory, with an 18-page bibliography, doesn't want to see, and doesn't understand the word plagiarism either,' Robbins says. I agree it's a fairly weak criticism, as is the complaint that she has stretched a basic idea into a whole book (and now tour) – something that could be applied to just about every self-help book ever written. Her podcast remains free and, unlike many other motivational 'influencers', she doesn't flog online courses, or supplements. I take more issue with some of the oversimplistic things she says: 'Success, love, happiness, money, friendship – these things are in limitless supply,' said the multimillionaire Mel Robbins to the billionaire Oprah Winfrey, on the latter's podcast. Robbins says she follows her own rules 'about 90% of the time'. When she's at home in Vermont, she gets up around 6am, makes her bed, 'so I don't crawl back into it', and high-fives herself in the mirror. She might take a bite of a banana, 'because of what Dr Stacy Sims said about cortisol and women never working out fasted'. Sims, a physiologist and one of her podcast guests, says that, for women, exercising on an empty stomach means burning lean muscle and holding on to fat. 'I was like: motherfucker, we've been gaslit by the fitness industry. It's incredible what she shared about women not being little men.' Robbins walks her dogs to get her early sunlight (it helps with the circadian rhythm), drinks water before her coffee, has breakfast. She has a regular walking group with friends. She likes to cook, so she'll start prepping dinner when she does lunch, then it's bath and bed not long after 9pm. 'I'm so fucking old,' she says with a laugh. 'But I love my sleep.' In the middle of it all is work. She wants, she says, to be an example 'of leaning into new things and reinventing myself over and over, and clawing our way out of debt in our 40s. There's so much you can do.' Robbins, similarly to Oprah, controls her empire. 'I don't want to be in a situation where I'm pissed off about the deal I made, and if I'm in control of what happens, the only person I can truly be mad at is me.' Is she a life coach or a media mogul? 'I'm just your friend, Mel,' she says with a bright smile. A few days later, on stage, Robbins is so overcome with emotion, she can barely get her last words out: 'I love you, I do, and I believe in you.' There are cheers and whoops, and that blast of confetti and Coldplay, and we leave on a high. I chat to two women, in their 40s, who had been sitting behind me, emotional at points; one has a delicate tattoo on her arm of a dandelion releasing its seeds and the words 'Let them … Let me'. They love Robbins, says Eva (with the tattoo), 'because she's so normal. She's been through stuff like all of us have, but she's got grit and determination, and she's an example that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.' Her friend Hayley says the years and the struggles since the pandemic have left her feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 'I know that I need to make a change,' she says, eyes shining. 'She makes you believe you can do it.' The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is published by Hay House UK at £22.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Her podcast is available here.
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Serial dating and push presents: love in the age of the algorithm is complex
Sitting in a hospital bed, pregnant Campbell Puckett, known as 'Pookie', is handed a Craie Kelly Epsom 25 Hermès bag (retailing around £20,000) by her husband, Jett. 'It's time for her push present,' he says behind the camera. The husband and wife are arguably the internet's favourite heterosexual couple at the moment, and if they are anything to go by, the standards for modern romance are high. Jett recently gave Pookie a single instruction on one of their European getaways: 'Do not leave Paris without a Birkin.' Luxury unboxings are a staple on their #relationshipgoals have increasingly influenced viewers' standards and expectations in their own relationships. The spectacle of lavish gifts and experiences can shift expectations and expressions of love towards the more demonstrable aspects of romance. 'If my husband doesn't get me a Hermès Kelly as my push present, he will be fired,' reads one TikTok comment. Sometimes, the deepest connections you feel toward a partner come not from the giving of gifts, but the smaller moments of kindness: preparing a favourite snack or a foot rub on the sofa. Growth and connection can come after the reconciling of a fight. Sometimes, love is just spending time together in silence. To their credit, Pookie and Jett also share more candid moments of love. 'In case any of you are wondering what Pookie's favourite thing to do is, it's cuddle,' says Jett, with a sleeping Campbell lying on his bare chest. Although one of their shared moments of breakfast in bed, sipping pink champagne and dancing together in PJs, was professionally filmed to launch their new merchandise line. These exceptionally high relationship goals are also found on the other side of the spectrum in the content of serial daters. 'Dating influencers' are predominantly young women who reveal all about their love lives to eager followers. Take TikToker estéeisonline, outlining her ideal man, she claims to just be looking for a '6ish foot, dark haired, good haired, moustached or bearded man … maybe with tattoos, who's funny (my kind of funny), creative, thoughtful, emotionally available, ambitious, makes money, wants kids, likes cats … and is my biggest fan'. In a later viral TikTok, she tearfully relays her disappointment at her date's request to split the bill. 'I just want a gentleman,' she says through tears. In this world of dating, if idealised standards aren't met, it doesn't matter that the date was 'good'. There is a personal cost to this style of dating. Hannah Zaslawski began a TikTok series where she tried to go on 50 first dates in pursuit of love. After experiencing major fatigue and burnout, she would suddenly call it quits at date number 38, and in doing so ended her virality. Influencers are almost obliged to keep drearily dating because the TikTok algorithm demands it. More uncomfortably, there is the question of our relationship to their relationships. Many of their viewers appear to live vicariously through them; something that becomes especially apparent when the relationship ends. Recently, when popular influencer The Wizard Liz called off her engagement to fellow YouTuber Landon Nickerson over his messaging of another woman, swathes of her fans had their own lives altered. 'If [Liz] had to go through this, us mortals, us little peasants … how are we going to survive?' declared another of her fans. In all of this content, it's apparent that influencer couples and daters make a deal – in exchange for sharing their lives with an audience, they are able to make an income through advertising and commerce. A couple becomes in effect a throuple – creator, partner/love interest and audience. Their audience buy what they sell because, in buying into their brand, they're buying into the ideal of romance being sold. Pookie wanted to be an influencer since 2017 and hit what the Cut called 'algorithm gold' when she introduced her husband into her content, after years of consistently posting with modest success. Items from their clothing line, Quintessential Love, are often sold out. Jett gives TED talks on how to 'authentically love out loud' like he does. Although, the business of likes has, at times, come between couples. Former Instagram it couple Jay Alvarrez and Alexis Ren's wanderlust relationship ended abruptly in 2016, when in spectacular public fashion ( destroying the facade entirely), Alexis told a fan that 'the relationship wasn't good for [Jay's] business any more'. Love in the age of the algorithm is complex – but creators and audiences would do well to remember that so is love in the real world. Zandile Powell is a video essayist and writer
Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Scam victim travels 500 miles to find French beauty Queen ‘lover' is married
A Belgian man travelled nearly 500 miles to meet a French beauty queen who he thought was his future wife – only to find out that he had been the victim of a romance scam. The man, who called himself Michel, turned up at the home of Sophie Vouzelaud, in Saint-Julien and announced: 'I am the future husband of Sophie Vouzelaud.' Her husband, Fabien, came out and said to Michel: 'Well, I'm the current one.' Ms Vouzelaud is a former Miss Limousin and Miss France 2007 runner-up. She has nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram and posts frequently about her life on social media. Michel, 76, believed that he had been speaking on WhatsApp to the French model for weeks and had even sent £25,000 – which he thought was going to be paid back. 'I think she played a dirty trick on me,' Michel said. In desperation, Michel showed the husband his phone, and the string of messages exchanged between himself and the person he believed to be Ms Vouzelaud. 'My wife, no, it's the fake accounts,' Fabien replied. 'You have to be very careful.' Soon, Michel realised that he had been swindled, and told the couple: 'I am an imbecile.'
