A multi-millionaire who gave away £16m... then lost his home, his possessions and his wife

Brian and Shirley Burnie mansion Doxford Hall in Northumberland

A multi-millionaire who gave away his entire fortune has split with his wife after his Good Samaritan act destroyed their 30-year marriage.

It’s the ironic twist in the tale of a bizarre story which started when big-hearted Brian Burnie’s beloved wife Shirley fell ill with breast cancer.

The philanthropist was so delighted when she made a full recovery that he developed an addiction to helping cancer sufferers just like her.

Yet as the 70-year-old sold off their £16million mansion, auctioned their belongings and ploughed all the proceeds into his own cancer charity in 2009, the love of his life was at the end of her tether.

Although the pair failed to see eye-to-eye on his non-profit venture, but Brian maintained all he needed was his family, publicly declaring at the time: “I’ve no interest in bricks and mortar. I’ve no interest in possessions.”

But four years after his selfless acts shocked and inspired the nation in equal measure, he also unintentionally lost the woman who had inspired him.

Speaking for the first time since the split, Shirley reveals: “I didn’t want to give everything away. We needed a home and an income and we have three children. I wanted security for us and our family.

“It took over his life, becoming more important than anything else to him. I said to him often that we had other things to consider, but his top three priorities were the charity, the charity and the charity.”

After selling off their 10-acre luxury estate Doxford Hall, complete with spa and hotel boasting a swimming pool and manicured lawns, the couple moved into a tiny rented terrace house in nearby Morpeth, Northumberland United Kingdom, opposite a council estate.

Brian’s runaround car became a battered old Ford Fiesta.

But an unfortunate chance encounter between his wife and a gossip at the local hairdresser threw his dream into disarray.

“I learned that he had bought a new home in Gosforth without telling me,” says Shirley.

“I confronted him and he admitted it was true. He’d owned it for three months and said nothing. I felt he’d made his ­preparations for the end of the marriage and waited for me to find out.

“There had to be a reason why he kept that quiet, I believed, and I assumed it must have been because he had decided the marriage was over and he was leaving.”

Shirley says that as well as giving up his money he was soon working 12 hours a day and barely seeing his family.

“I felt he had put me in a position where we had to end the marriage,” she says.

They divorced in 2012.

But Brian tells a different story, insisting he never wanted to end their relationship. And he still maintains there was nothing sinister about the purchase of the house.

“I never intended to live in it, I bought it for the charity but it wasn’t right and I had to get different premises,” he told the Sunday Mirror.

“I wish I’d never bought it because I could have put the money to better use.”

He goes on: “We live in a selfish, greedy society. If we can introduce our children to charitable acts at a young age, there is hope that the flame will take in them and they’ll see how much you get from helping others.”

His children are all grown up and he still sees them regularly, even though his actions mean they won’t get a penny.           

He never went to university but modestly says he had a “knack for business” that made him a vast fortune over 40 years.

He ­progressed from grocery delivery boy to builder’s apprentice, to trained engineer, to running his own company, first in construction, then petro­chemicals, and later recruitment.