British grandmother, 65, dating 44-year-old Gambian waiter says men her age are 'like washed-up coleslaw' - as she lavishes him with thousands of pounds worth of gifts
Zena, 65, from Oxted, Surrey, was on holiday in The Gambia two years ago when she came across Ebrima, a waiter at her resort who is 21 years her junior.
With much matchmaking taking place online in the 21st century, Zena was delighted when Ebrima pined after her with flowers, asking her out on a date.
The mother-of-four starred on the programme 90 Day Fiancé UK, where her love story with her now-boyfriend, Ebrima, 44, was told.
'I thought he's rather nice, he's tall, he's handsome, we've had a few dates and we've had a relationship ever since,' she said.
Zena admitted that the age-gap relationship is Ideal as 'I don't really fancy men my own age'. She added: 'Men in their 60s, I'm not attracted to. They're all bald and have big fat guts. They're like washed-up coleslaw. I don't fancy young men, I like an in-between.'
But although Zena appears to be happy that she has finally found someone after three failed long-term relationships, her family are not convinced that Ebrima has her best intentions at heart, especially after they uncovered his secret social media profile.
Since dating, Zena has bought him an iPhone, a mattress and sent him more than £1,000 for occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, and to help his struggling family. Ebrima has also asked her for £3,000 so he can set up a taxi business.
She said: 'He's extremely fit and I am so attracted to him. When I put a few posts up on my social media, a lot of people said "You're just a visa vagina" or "You're just a sex tourist." No, I'm not a sex tourist because if I wanted [to have] sex in England I would, even at my age.'
Zena added: 'I am a generous person and if I think someone needs money, I will give it to them because you can only keep so much for yourself.'
However, her elderly mother, 95, disapproves of Ebrima, adding that she hopes the pair do not end up marrying, while Zena's granddaughter Tillie believes the fairy tale romance may all be too good to be true.
'He could have four ladies exactly like you all sending him money,' she speculated.
Zena's daughter, Zoe, said: 'I don't think she's thinking straight but I hope for her sake, he's going to prove us all wrong. If he does ask for money that is definitely a red flag.'
Ebrima - who also appeared on the show - told Zena that he 'really, really wants to get to England' after speaking about how poorly workers are paid in his country.
'The income is very low so it is dependent on tips,' he said. 'Everyone is struggling to have English people because English people give tips.
'Zena is very good for my family. She usually helps me with money and clothes, now I don't buy clothes.'
Ebrima - who is a practising Muslim - has always told Zena that he does not have social media, but after her friend Lisa told her to do some digging, she was shocked to find out that she had been lied to.
After Tillie found his profile on Facebook, Zena said: 'What a cheek. I'm furious really. He said he never had one.'
The waiter also stated he was single on his social media account, with Tillie and Zena uncovering the heaps of scantily-clad women on his Facebook Friends list.
'I feel sick, he's totally deceived me,' she said, adding that her intention is to confront him about the lie during her trip to The Gambia, which will be the first time she has come face-to-face with her lover in eight months.
'[I'll say] 'You're supposed to be a Muslim and they're not supposed to do things like that. He's always telling me 'Don't wear this, don't wear that, don't drink this, don't drink that'. Well I'm sure his w****s on his social media drink.'
Upon arriving at the tropical country and being greeted at the airport by her younger lover, Zena was less than impressed with the hotel they were staying in, calling it 'a f***ing building site'.
She said: 'I sometimes feel a bit gutted that he hasn't got anything for me. At least there's one thing he can give me that's priceless. I just want to have one good night together before I have it out with him.'
But the morning after, Ebrima irritated Zena when he made her tea 'too milky' and she attempted to get the answers she desperately needed.
When she asked whether he had social media, Ebrima said: 'It's been deleted for a long time. It's not there now.'
But then Zena said he was 'lying' and showed him his own Facebook profile, adding: 'You've put single. Are you single?'
He responded: 'It was a joke, I like joking.'
The 65-year-old then asked why he had not accepted her friend request and said: 'I don't really think it's that funny. I'm not going to waste all my time getting over here, buying you things and buying things for your family and then, lo and behold, you're playing me.
'I don't think it's a joke because I'm taking our relationship seriously. You're going single on here, you could get other women approaching you to join you as a friend, what would you do then?'
Ebrima said he was an 'entertainer' and that he would often delete friend requests from women rather than accepting them.
The argument turned heated, with Zena saying: 'This isn't a f***ing joke and I'm not happy about that.'
She added: 'Who does he think he is? He has trouble making conversation so I don't understand how he thinks he's an entertainer.
'He's lying straight to my face because I know he's got women on there because I've seen them.'
But Ebrima maintains he was joking by setting one up and said that he only used it for around a month.
In the preview for the fourth episode, Ebrima takes Zena to the house he has been building, but she is far from impressed when she sees that her bedroom barely has four walls and no roof.
'Finances were the main issue,' he said, while saying that he still needs around £2,000 to help with the cost, but Zena is reluctant to take out a loan to help out her boyfriend.
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Home is fit, with the physique of a man a couple of decades his junior, as he demonstrates when, for our photographer, he holds the lotus pose for a long time in the hot London sun. 'I do tai chi, for my sins, which I enjoy – but I tend to stay away from teachers who start telling you how it's a 5,000-year-old tradition, because it isn't,' he says. 'I don't really understand why saying something is old makes it good. Someone had to invent it at some point and whether that was two weeks ago or 5,000 years ago doesn't make that much of a difference.' His upbringing may go some way to explaining the zaniness of his career. He was adopted as a baby and grew up in Merton, south-west London; by the age of about 12, he had developed 'a critical interest in the occult' and was reading books on the topic. His mother was a bohemian drug addict, and had worked at Murray's Cabaret Club at the same time as Christine Keeler. Home was briefly the bassist in a ska band, and by the end of the 1970s had begun writing fanzines and experimental texts. He has been a sui generis writer and artist ever since. As a non-mainstream Leftist – of that camp, but not a fan of the Labour Party – he has often been lumped in with anarchists, to his chagrin. In 1994, he wrote a column about them, at a time when the British tabloids were frantic that they might become violent insurrectionists. 'I was saying they couldn't organise a p--s-up in a brewery, which seemed to go down a lot worse with anarchists than saying they were a violent threat to society.' The piece led to people following him around London, and to the suspicious appearance of claims that he was an undercover police officer or a child trafficker. Home has since been more circumspect about revealing anything of his personal life. As we talk, we walk around Bunhill Fields, a burial ground on the fringe of the City of London, and the final resting place of Daniel Defoe and William Blake. The original plan had been to talk at his nearby flat, but Home didn't want to be photographed there, whether inside or outside it. And, given his writing has been full of bilious invective, he's surprisingly softly-spoken. So much of his work has been about sex. Dead Princess is highly pornographic; in some scenes, a ventriloquist's dummy gets involved. Doesn't he believe that some things in literature can be beyond the pale? 'I think some things are in bad taste. Racist jokes are in bad taste. Lots of things are in bad taste. But I don't necessarily believe the same things as other people. 'There's a lot of sexual repression now. I think we've been moving backwards, in that [literature about sex] is either divided into porn, or quite sanitised, in a lot of mainstream culture. And if I read my old books with younger audiences, and you just use words like 'C--t'…' He mock-gasps. C--t, he points out, 'is just a book, and it didn't get the same reaction at the time. As long as it's not used in a kind of misogynistic discourse, I don't have a huge problem with Anglo-Saxon. I think it depends on context as well. I think it would be quite hard to get a lot of the early books published now. It was very hard to get Art School Orgy published.' Home has often been accused of writing things that seem to make factual claims, yet are palpably untrue. Does objective reality matter? 'What I particularly enjoy doing is telling people things that are true and have them not believe me,' he replies. Is that because you have told so many untruths, I ask. 'Maybe. I'm not sure. I also enjoy people thinking something shouldn't exist.' Take the Necrocard, a joke organ-donor card for supporters of 'sexual liberation' for necrophiliacs; he devised that one after a friend needed a kidney transplant. An error by the printer meant that Home had about 50,000 of them, which he handed out to people in Soho. 'The local Aids hospice was desperate for as many as they could have,' he says with not a little relish. But when it comes to yoga, it's different. 'If people want to do yoga, I can't stop them, and I wouldn't want to stop them,' he says. 'But I think they should be informed about what it is, where it comes from and what the potential risks are of some moves.' For once, Stewart Home appears to be serious.
