Virgin radio’s #SaveNeil Valentine’s gold-digger story grips commuters – and ends a relationship

Vigin Radio's Kris Fade Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

A segment on Virgin Radio's The Kris Fade Show about Valentine's Day gifts turned into a nail-­biting session for commuters this week, prompting an outpouring of support, one broken relationship – and what has to be some of Dubai's best morning radio.

The drama began on Monday when a woman called in to boast about the extravagant gifts her boyfriend had given her.

“Last year my guy got me two pairs of Louboutins, the Swarovski ones, each costing Dh24,000, and I didn’t get him nothing.”

She went on to disclose he had also bought her a Porsche for Christmas.

Just as the conversation was about to close, Fade popped a serious question.

“Anonymous, be serious with me for a minute. If the money was gone tomorrow, would you still be with him?”

Anonymous only paused briefly before saying that she was a self-centred person and she didn’t know if she would be with him should the money disappear.

What unfolded next surely sent adrenalin surging through morning traffic jams all over the UAE.

It turns out the Louboutin-­gifter was listening to the call, recognised his lady’s voice and called in to the show.

The bewildered and hurtsounding fellow identified himself as Neil.

“Yes,” he replied, when asked whether he loved her. “Yes, I’m just shocked by her response to the question. My sister was over at Christmas and she told me she was like that ... I like to spoil people and be generous but when you hear something like that ...”

Neil said there would be a talk that night and the show could call him in the morning to find out what happened. Cue listeners taking to Twitter in a gush of support for polite Neil, adopting the hashtag #SaveNeil.

The next morning, Neil confirmed that after phoning his sister in England and a visit to his personal trainer, Jane Head, who is also his mentor and was similarly suspicious of Anonymous’s intentions, he had sent her packing. The first thing she asked was: “Can I keep the Porsche?”

When The National spoke to her yesterday, Head said of her client: "Neil is a lovely young man who treated his girlfriend in a lovely way and just got taken advantage of.

“I think it’s also the fact that she spoke in such a degrading way about the gifts he had given her that was so shocking.”

And while the station has received hundreds of messages and there have been repeated tweets from women interested in picking up where Anonymous left off, Head says Neil finds attention troubling.

“A lot of the girls tweeting to #SaveNeil have offered to take him out and cheer him up – they’ve said his ex-girlfriend was a horrible gold digger and yet they are tweeting someone they’ve never met and inviting them out, all because they know from the radio that he’s a wealthy young man.”

Head spoke to Neil on Wednesday morning and, while he was feeling shocked at the surreal situation, he appreciated all the support he has received.

“He is feeling embarrassed about being taken advantage of,” she said, “so he is going to keep his anonymity for now.”

Neil’s story has prompted the biggest response in the history of the show, says Fade.

“It took me completely off-guard and I was glad I asked the right questions, I guess,” he says.

“While what happened to Neil was horrible, I have been getting a lot of phone calls supporting what we did on the show because it changed his life, hopefully for the better.”

Although it would be easy to condemn Anonymous, Fade cautions against it.

“That’s why we never mentioned her real name on the radio, because we want to protect her as well,” he says. “What she did may have affected her with this guy, but we don’t want it to affect her whole life. Going forward, maybe she will change and learn from what ­happened.”

Staff at the Burj Al Arab – where Neil had been planning to propose to Anonymous this weekend – were among Neil’s new supporters, tweeting: “Neil, we have a comfort hamper waiting for you at #BurjAlArab. We are here for you.”

Along with an invite from the morning crew to hang out VIP-style this weekend at RedFestDXB – which didn’t sound much like Neil’s style – he will have family visiting: he invited his sister and her husband out to Dubai, so they could spend their Valentine’s Day in the suite he had rented.

As Fade told him on-air on Tuesday: “Continue what you are doing, know the country is behind you. Everyone in their cars, everyone in their office space is thinking of you. You found the wrong woman but I’m sure there’s a good one waiting for you.”

* With files from Saeed Saeed