London's Most Married

By Rob Last edited 223 months ago
London's Most Married
wedding rings.jpg

A man callled Melvyn who had three wives. Sounds like the beginning to a nursery rhyme or something doesn't it?

But Melvyn is quite real, and up until very recently he was a resident of Wimbledon.

As the Telegraph explains today Mr Melvyn Reed was a bit of a marriage addict. In 1966 he married one Jean Grafton in Fulham and had three kids before the relationship broke down.

They never properly divorced.

In 1998 Melvyn caught the wedding bug again and became betrothed to Denise Harrington up in Doncaster.

And then two years ago up popped Lyndsey Hutchinson. Lyndsey and Melvyn were married on Wimbledon Common in 2003.

Three wives, none of whom knew anything about each other. It's a Channel 5 documentary in the making if ever we saw one.

So what went wrong? Well, Melvyn's heart went wrong. Mel had to go to hospital for a bypass (must have been the stress) and all three Mrs Reeds thought they'd visit Mel's bedside...at the same time.

Two weeks after he was discharged Mel did the honourablw thing and handed himself in to the local police station in Wimbledon. In a police statement he said "Unfortunately the timing of the visits went out of sync and they all arrived at once."

Unbelievably Melvyn is now back living with his first wife in Kettering. Who said history doesn't repeat itself?

Last Updated 11 August 2005