Dream honeymoon for former English championship boxer Shayne Singleton almost ko'd after he arrives at Manchester Airport with wrong passports

Shayne and his new bride, Jade Laycock, were getting ready to check in for their 12 hour flight to the Maldives when they discovered they had packed their two young sons’ passports instead of their own.

“I knew as soon as I saw them they belonged to the kids because they are different colours to ours,” said Shayne of Barnoldswick. “It was my fault as I had got everything ready and I separated our passports from the children’s, but then I picked up the wrong ones.”

With just one hour left for check in the couple, of Barnoldswick, rang their friend Aftab Afzal, who had just dropped them off, to see if he could retrieve the right passports for them. He arranged to collect them from Jade’s mum, Cathy, who was at home looking after the couple’s two sons, Stanley (nine) and 19-month-old Ralphie whose passports the newlyweds had mistakenly taken with them. Cathy dashed to meet Aftab, who owns a tyre business next door to the couple’s gym, at Nelson B and Q, before he headed back to the airport.

Shayne, who is also a former WBC international champ and also dad to D’ann (14) said: “The airport staff told us that once check in closed that was it, there was no way they could let us through even though there was another hour after that before the flight was due to take off. Jade was sat in the airport with her head in her hands.”

Luckily for the couple, who married at The Stirk House Hotel in Gisburn, a group of travellers arrived to check in for the same flight which gave them some extra time and by then Aftab had arrived with their passports. Shayne added: “ Aftab really was the hero of the hour. We could have caught a later flight but it was five hours later and that would have thrown all the rest of the journey out of sync and we could have lost 24 hours of our honeymoon.”

The drama didn’t end there as when the couple, who own their own gym in Colne called Team Singys’ Amateur Boxing Club where Jade, who has a 14-year-old daughter Lacey, is also a personal trainer, finally landed at Male International Airport they went to the wrong area for their luggage. As a result they ended up missing the seaplane to the Reethi Beach Resort where they were staying.

Shayne said: “We didn’t mind we only had to wait an hour so we sat in the airport watching all the other seaplanes taking off. After all that drama it was quite relaxing in the end.”