The diversity of Brighton and Hove was highlighted today after a High Court Judge made a landmark ruling allowing a Whitehawk resident to legally marry his favourite fruit machine.
Martin Bennett, of Wilson Avenue has been fighting the courts for over two years after hearing of a similar case in America. Mr Bennett becomes the first person in the UK to be granted permission to legally marry a one armed bandit in a case which is predicted to open the floodgates for other ‘fruity lovers’ across the country.
Martin claims to have been dating the Deal or No Deal machine in The Post and Telegraph on North Street for just over five years. He said he first noticed the machine give him the ‘come on’ after a night with out with friends, ‘Me and my pals had all gone out and we had ended up the Weatherspoons, It got to about midnight and my mates started to drift off home and I found myself alone at the bar. I saw the fruit machine flashing away and it looked lonely so I started chatting away to it and it we hit off straight away. We just haven’t looked back since’ he beamed.
Over the course of the next two years Mr Wilson would visit the fruit machine every evening after work. Dale Andrews, who was working behind the bar at the time recalls the interesting relationship that developed, ‘I thought it was a bit strange a first, this weird bloke coming in and chatting up the fruity, but after observing them for a few months you could tell it was genuine. The way he looked at it, it was so intense, it’s the same way my mrs looks at that prick Poldark on the telly, it was so romantic. He would buy meals and share it with the machine, he would stuff food into the money slot which was a barstad to clear up but they were so in love I was never going to stop him. In the last few months I worked there I started letting him stay after hours so he could spend some alone time with the fruity, what he does then is between himself, a flashing imagine of Noel Edmunds and the poor girls who have to come and clean everything in the morning. Good fucking luck to him that’s what I say.’
Following the decision Wetherspoon’s have granted Mr Wilson permission to purchase the fruit machine, which he has named ‘Cherry’, and the couple now live in his 2 bedroom flat in Whitehawk. So far cohabiting is going well as Martin explains, ‘ Yea it lovely to have some alone time really, we enjoy doing things any other couple would, going out for meals, snuggling up on the sofa and long walks although I have to push Cherry in a shopping trolley for most of the walk, it is just as much fun. We can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together. You could say I have hit the jackpot!’ He said.
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