A BASINGSTOKE mum is in the national spotlight this week after organising a fake marriage to her son’s friend who is less than half her age.

As previously reported in The Gazette, Sam Young took to Facebook to find a groom for a fake wedding reception.

She decided to organise the party to cheer up her family after her grandmother Irene Armer was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The 47-year-old, from Buckskin, Basing-stoke, was shopping with her sister when she came up with the unusual idea of having a wedding without getting married.

She told The Gazette: “I have been single for a long time and I’m happily single, but I thought ‘why can’t I do this?’”

Sam got married when she was 21, but was eight months pregnant at the time, and did not have much money for a lavish wedding.

She divorced in 1995, and after losing several stone in weight over the last year, wanted to wear the dress of her dreams to show off her new figure.

She bought herself a £1,000 diamond ring, booked the reception venue and bought a wedding dress – all that was left to find was a groom.

Sam told That’s Life! magazine that she had offers flooding in following her Facebook advert, but said none of the 15 would-be grooms fitted the bill.

She said: “I was looking for tall, dark and handsome, and they were short, bald and paunchy.”

But it was her son Callan’s friend, Ashley Day, who saved the day when he offered to take on the groom’s role.

Sam, a mother-of-two, said she was unsure at first because Ashley was only 23, but she told That’s Life! they shared the same “zany sense of humour”, adding: “I’ve always wanted to bag a toyboy.”

The pair were pictured in the magazine on their ‘big day’ at which a toast was given to Sam’s grandmother, who died before the reception took place.

But Sam and her fake groom have remained tight-lipped about the party following publication of the article.

Ashley took to Twitter to ask people to delete posts about the story, saying: “No im not married! My friends mum mum had a fake wedding and asked me to do it for a joke!”

He added: “Loooool i made a fortune out of this article and it was only a joke! Waaaa! I done for a favour for my pals mum! No i didnt marry ANYONE!!!”

He declined to speak to The Gazette, as did Sam.