Web love rat exposed

When Mark Ridgewell was caught out having four girlfriends on the go, the women in his life decided to get their own back in humiliating fashion.

The 44-year-old management consultant was lured to his favourite pub by one of his lady friends, Dawn Knight.

As they sat chatting intimately in a corner, with Mr Ridgewell enjoying a pint of Guinness, in marched the other three cheated women to give him a dressing down in front of his friends and neighbours.

As they bombarded him with questions, a photographer from the local paper, The Gloucestershire Echo, which had been tipped off, stepped forward to record his shame for posterity.

'We asked him questions such as, "why did you do it?" but he just kept sitting there saying "No comment", recalled Mrs Knight, 37.

'We told him what he had done was not fair. God knows what his children think.

'We wanted to humiliate him in front of his friends and neighbours. I think, to say the least, he was a bit dumbfounded. I don't think he could believe it had happened.'

Mr Ridgewell had met the women through an Internet dating agency. He described himself as a 6ft 2in, rugby-playing, Financial Timesreading executive earning between £50,000 and £75,000 a year.

Telling them he was separated from his wife and was 'totally faithful, extremely sincere and very passionate', he fed them identical chat-up lines, apparently to avoid mixing them up.

The women were called ' Princess' or ' Sexy', sent CD e-mails such as Stevie Wonder's You Are The Sunshine Of My Life and posted late-night text messages which soothed: 'Miss you. Sleep tight.' He took two of them to West Ham football matches so their children could meet his own. Mr Ridgewell, from Northleach, Gloucestershire, has two children, aged 14 and 16, by his ex-wife Alison.

He was caught out when one of the girlfriends checked who he had been sending e-mails to.

As well as Mrs Knight, he was seeing 47-year-old Lynn Henderson from Bristol, 46-year-old Janet Graham from Essex and 35-yearold-Jo Jolly from Horsham, West Sussex, who said he had proposed to her after four dates.

Mother-of-two Mrs Knight said: 'I saw him six or seven times after I had not been long separated from my husband.

'He was ever so charming, although he looks nicer in his photograph than in real life.'

She said she grew suspicious when she was staying at Mr Ridgewell's three-bedroom home and he refused to answer his door or mobile phone.

'It had been one of the other women,' she said. 'I then received an e-mail from this woman asking me if I knew Mark and was in a relationship.

'She told me not to tell Mark, but I did. He said to block all her e-mails and called her a "bunny boiler".'

The woman turned out to be Miss Graham, who said: 'I was desperately in love with this man and this hurts. I think it is incredibly sad that a man feels he has to do this.'

Investigations soon unearthed Miss Jolly, who had stayed with Mr Ridgewell at a Travel Lodge and his home. 'I had a feeling there was something not quite right because he was never around for weeks on end,' she said.

'In spite of this, he said things like, "I want to visit your parents' house and ask your father permission to marry you" and he called me his "soul mate".'

'I actually fell in love with him. I thought everything in my life was going the right way and it was going to end with him.'

Miss Henderson, who said she had also slept with him, said: 'I met him first on the 25th of July for a lunch date and then I went to meet his children.

'I did not see him for quite a few weeks and cancelled another date because I thought he was playing me around.

'I told him not to contact me again but then he sent a CD e-mail of Daniel Bedingfield. I said I really couldn't be bothered with him, but then he texted me and asked "when am I going to have the pleasure of your company again?" '

The women's revenge came at The Wheatsheaf in Northleach, after Mr Ridgewell had cooked Mrs Knight a dinner of chicken in sweet and sour sauce.

One of the customers said: 'The women came in and all said, "Hello, darling. Hello, Mark". He went on sitting there as cool as a cucumber.'

Mr Ridgewell was keeping a low profile yesterday. 'It's a contrived story,' he said. 'I'm very annoyed with what's happened. It's victimisation. I dispute the facts of what they are saying.

'I knew these women but it doesn't mean I was having a relationship with them. They were just friends - certainly not lovers.'