British OAP, 83, who married 37-year-old Egyptian toyboy, lashes out

• Iris Jones, 83, gave her take on the now-dropped romance on Facebook

An 83-year-old woman who rose to fame after marrying her Egyptian lover, who is more than half her age, has called him a “selfish money taker”.

Iris Jones, 83, married Mohamed Ibrahim, 37, in June 2020 and assured critics, including her family, that their relationship would last.

But three months ago it emerged she had kicked him out of her home near Weston-super-Mare and replaced him in her affections with her cat Mr Tibbs.

In a post on her Facebook page, Iris, who once bragged about the couple’s ‘good sex’, said: “I want to tell you the whole truth about the relationship between Mohamed and me since the day his first post has been sent to me so far.

“On June 25, 2019, I received a message from Mohamed and we became friends on Messenger.

“He seemed like a nice guy and from the start he was forced to marry and as a result four children were born.”

“He was going through a divorce and he felt I was the person who could understand and he could talk to.

“He sent me pictures of himself and I said, ‘You’ll find someone else soon, a handsome guy like you.’

“I told him about me, an old biddy of about 79 with two adult sons, older than him, both married and living not far from my house.

“Our messages continued and I started to realize that he was getting more loving and on July 10, 2019 he proposed marriage!”

“He had never seen what I looked like and my first reaction was ‘You really are crazy!’

“But the love bombing continued and in November 2019 I flew to Cairo and met him.

“I had taken several thousand pounds with me and paid off all his debts as he had borrowed with his credit card.

“We had a wonderful time and I stayed for a month. We tried to get married, but we didn’t have the right documents.

Iris then described how an official at the British Embassy in Cairo, called John Neil, warned her: “Don’t give him any money”.

Sadly, Iris didn’t take his advice and wrote that the next time she went to visit Mohammed she took £15,000 and gave it to him.

By now Covid had hit and marriage attempts were thwarted by the pandemic, but on her third trip in 2020 they got married.

Iris said: “I had £40,000 in my bank account and I handed my bank card to Mohamed every day and we were drawing 1,000 Egyptian pounds a day.

“It was to pay for living expenses, restaurant meals, a honeymoon in Sharm-El-Shiek and generally enjoying the high life.”

After three months in Egypt, Irish returned to the UK and as she left Cairo she wrote how Mohammed told her: “Check your bank account when you return to Heathrow.

“I think you’ll have about nine thousand dollars in there.”

Furious, Iris launched: “He was absolutely right. There is £9,000 left of the £40,000. Mohamed never had a job and never had any money.

“I would tell people that we shared the expenses, but my money paid for everything.”

Iris added that even back in the UK, Mohammed would ask for money and she would send him another £14,000.

In November 2021, Mohammed obtained a spouse visa and was able to travel to the UK where he was allowed to stay for two years, pending a review in two months.

To satisfy the Home Office, Iris poured money into his account so he wouldn’t look like he was “mopping up the state”.

But even after finding a job at a local supermarket, Irish wrote he would ‘continue to ask a lot’, so much so that she gave him an extra £26,000.

Iris said, “I told her, ‘more money.’ If I fell dead tomorrow, I wouldn’t have enough to bury myself.

She continued: “He said at this point he needed an extra £40,000. Well, you’ll have to whistle it because I don’t have it.

Iris added that the relationship then started to deteriorate, with many arguments, especially after Mohamed learned that he would not inherit his beachfront bungalow.

Mohamed offered to give Iris the names of the women who would “come to him” if she changed her will and, tellingly, on her post, she wrote: “It occurred to me that this is maybe that’s why he married me.

Iris ended her lengthy post by saying, “I can say a lot more at this point, but it could involve legal issues.

“Through Mohamed’s behavior, I learned that he exhibited many traits of narcissism.

“I researched the situation thoroughly, as I wanted to save my marriage, but Mohamed wouldn’t listen.

“He was always right, I was always wrong. On June 13 of this year, after another vitriolic argument, I told him to leave.

“It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make because my love for Mohamed was genuine but there was no point in pretending things were going to get better.

“I let my head rule my heart. There’s so much more I could say at this point, but that’s for another article.