Publishing tycoon Dominic De Sousa craved fame as a singer but only found it when he died performing at a BBC event.
Now his name is at the centre of an astonishing inheritance battle as his sister claims a fake Russian bride is using a forged wedding certificate to pose as his widow.
Mr De Sousa was 56 when he died on stage singing Hey Jude at a BBC Good Food Awards ceremony in Dubai in December 2015, as Great British Bake Off presenter Paul Hollywood watched.
The incident so shocked TV celebrity chef James Martin, who had chatted to Mr De Sousa moments before his death, that he quit his Saturday Kitchen show as he re-evaluated his life.
Refuge: Svetlana Brezhneva with a tiger cub
The latest twist is that a tiger-wrestling Russian, Svetlana Brezhneva, 58, who lives in Dubai, has applied to the High Court in London claiming to be his widow.
She says in documents filed in court that Mr De Sousa’s UK assets, worth £640,000, were wrongly given to his sister Maria De Sousa – and that they should instead be paid to her.
Miss De Sousa has hit back in legal documents, denying there was a marriage and claiming that a wedding certificate from Kislovodsk in Russia in 2014 is forged.
Born in Kenya, Mr De Sousa moved to London as a child, went to school with snooker star Jimmy White and played guitar in a cruise ship band called Black Velvet.
A British citizen, he lived in Merton, south London, but then made his fortune in magazines in Dubai.
Performing as a singer, however, remained his first love and he continued to do so at public events and on the internet.
His mother’s funeral: Svetlana Brezhneva (front left) with Maria (right) at the funeral of Dominic De Sousa's mother in 2010 Sousa middle of back row
In the 1990s, as is accepted by his sister, he met Miss Brezhneva, who rescued big cats abandoned from the zoos of United Emirates royals and ran a small refuge for lions and tigers with which she would tussle playfully.
The Russian now claims
