His life is beyond easy emulation, encompassing service in the SAS, exploits in Sierra Leone and Angola that made him a multi-millionaire and, later, leading the so-called “Wonga Coup”, an unsuccessful attempt to depose Teodoro Obiang, president of Equatorial Guinea, after which he survived malaria for five years in African prisons, 18 months of which he spent, shackled, in solitary confinement in a cell “six feet wide and seven feet long.” “.
But let’s not assume that, at the age of 71, Simon Mann is in the mood to fall into a nostalgic mood.
Quite the contrary: I can reveal that the former Old Etonian Scots Guards officer has left his third wife, the vivacious Amanda, mother of four of his seven children, and is now apparently being comforted by a woman more than 20 years his junior. that he.
“Simon and Amanda have split up,” a friend of the couple tells me, adding that Mann has moved out of the south coast home where they have lived since shortly after his release in 2009.
Mann, who is now involved in medicinal cannabis cultivation in North Macedonia, declines to comment.
Old Eton ex-Scots Guards officer Simon Mann has left his third wife, the vivacious Amanda, mother of four of his seven children, and is now apparently being comforted by a woman more than 20 years his junior. Pictured: Simon with Amanda in 2012.
Jack Mann (right) is a friend of Prince Harry and one of Simon’s children from his first marriage.
But a friend says it’s not a temporary separation. “They’re getting divorced,” the friend tells me, adding that the marriage has been “very difficult” since Mann’s return from Africa.
“They decided to stay together until their youngest son left home.”
This summary surprises locals, who regularly saw the Manns, both dressed in black, running in Lymington, and visitors to their wisteria-covered house overlooking the Isle of Wight.
“They seemed completely at ease with each other,” one of them tells me. “Obviously Simon led an extraordinary life, but Amanda liked that. She liked the drama. He referred to her as “the duchess.”
“He seemed to appreciate that she would keep the show going, no matter what he did.”
More recently, the younger Mann generation seemed to be having the most affairs, particularly Jack Mann, one of Simon’s sons from his first marriage.
As well as being named Prince Harry’s “real best man”, Jack, who married last year, had a planned business trip to Libya cut short when he and his colleagues attempted to fly from Malta.
The authorities decided that it was necessary to “rectify” their documentation, a process that lasted five days.
The Duke of Sussex stood shoulder to shoulder with his best man, Jack Mann, and his other closest accomplices in the ‘band of brothers’ photograph at Windsor Castle on the night of the royal wedding.
His father’s prolonged captivity seemed destined to end in death. Funded by ‘Smelly’, the Lebanese repairman Ely Calil, who later died after falling down the stairs at his home in Holland Park, west London, and allegedly instigated by ‘Scratcher’ (Sir Mark Thatcher, son of Lady Thatcher), The attempted ‘Wonga Coup’ prompted President Obiang to promise that he would eat Mann’s testicles and drag his naked body through the streets.
Amanda, who was fighting for her husband’s release, showed an insatiable spirit at all times and won a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: “A man is up for Christmas.” Not for life.
Unfortunately, that has now been proven correct. But Amanda, 58, is not entirely alone, even though the youngest of her four children has left home.
“Her mother is with her,” a friend tells me. “She has lived with Amanda and Simon for years.”