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He is not the first multimillionaire to quit the world of commerce and vow to give his entire fortune to charity. But few can have put their money where their mouth is with such conviction as Brian Burnie.

Once the owner of a £16million mansion, the 70-year-old now lives off his pension in a small flat and drives a battered Ford Fiesta.

The former recruitment firm boss pledged to dedicate his life to helping women with breast cancer after his wife was diagnosed with the disease.

But it emerged yesterday that the couple divorced after Shirley, his wife of almost 30 years, grew fed up with his addiction to parting with everything the family had worked for.

‘I didn’t intend to have to beat cancer and then spend the rest of my life living in a house like this and doing everything for everyone else,’ said Mrs Burnie, 66, who made a full recovery. ‘I’m sick of bloody charity and the hard work – we all are. 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.’

Born in a Newcastle bedsit, Mr Burnie grew up in a home without an indoor toilet and began working life as a grocery delivery boy aged 15.

After building successful businesses in construction and recruitment, he turned his ten-acre Northumberland estate into a £16million luxury hotel and spa.

But following his wife’s diagnosis a decade ago, Mr Burnie began to focus on charity. It was not a total surprise – at their wedding in 1981, he insisted they ask for donations to charity instead of presents.

In 2009, he sold the hotel and used all the proceeds to fund a fleet of cars ferrying rural patients to hospital – as part of his charity, Daft As A Brush.

Announcing they needed somewhere more ‘modern and easy to look after’, he shocked friends and former employees by moving his family to a tiny rented terraced house opposite a council estate in nearby Morpeth, insisting: ‘I’ve no interest in bricks and mortar.’

But there were signs his outwardly loyal wife was unhappy with the drastic change in lifestyle when he was persuaded to move them to a pretty stone house backing on to farmland.

Mrs Burnie hoped her husband’s retirement would allow them to spend more time together, but she said the ‘madness’ of devoting his life to helping others meant he was working 12 hours a day and barely seeing his family.

‘It took over his life, becoming more important than anything else to him,’ she added yesterday.

‘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.’ In 2011, she learned from someone at a hairdresser’s that her husband had bought a home in Gosforth, Newcastle, without telling her.

‘I felt he’d made his preparations for the end of the marriage and waited for me to find out,’ she said.

Shortly afterwards, according to Mrs Burnie, he told her the marriage was over, moving into a flat above the charity’s offices. The couple divorced in 2012.

But Mr Burnie denies he wanted to end the relationship and maintains there was nothing sinister about the house purchase, saying: ‘I never intended to live in it. I bought it for the charity.’ He still sees his grown-up children regularly, but they will not get a penny from him.

‘I had enough money to set them up for life, but I think that would be wrong,’ he said. ‘Your children have to make their own way.

Mr Burnie features in Channel 4’s documentary Jon Richardson Grows Up, tonight at 10.35pm. There is no mention of the couple’s split, though it does show him living alone in his flat.

Asked if he kept anything for himself he replies: ‘Nothing. I live off my pension – even that goes to the charity when I die.’