She is the Midland web design boss who claimed to have spent £100,000 in one month on clothes alone. Publicity-loving Kay Hammond boasts of being a successful internet entrepreneur in charge of a business said to be worth £4 million. She brags about her lavish lifestyle, enjoys invitations to charity galas, and has been romantically linked to a string of minor celebrities. The larger-than-life businesswoman once even tried to sell herself as a potential bride to suitors on the inter-net for a cool £250,000. But today a Sunday Mercury investigation asks: just who is the real Kay Hammond? Because after digging deep into her firms finances we have found a very different picture to the one the Midlands most colourful boss likes to portray. We discovered that her company - Tamba Consultancy Ltd - is valued at just £3,000 and has been taken to court for failing to pay a £5,000 debt. It has now been listed as a maximum risk by Britains leading credit checking firm, Experian. On Friday, Ms Hammond seemed flustered when we called her offices and claimed she had no knowledge of any debts - even though the information is publicly available. I really dont know. Its the first Ive heard about it. It worries me, she said. The blonde businesswoman, from Erdington in Birmingham, put herself into the public eye three years ago when she tried to auction herself as a bride on the internet. She claimed she was desperate to find a husband, but after a host of hoax bids she called the sale off. The worldwide publicity she received should have given a welcome boost to her company, which she has previously claimed to have founded at just 17. In fact, Tamba was incorporated with Ms Hammond as its sole director in March 1997 - when she was 19. Since then, she has told how she wants to turn the firms supposed £500,000 turnover in 2004 to nearer £1 million by the end of this year. In one recent business profile Tamba was valued at a cool £4 million, although there are currently no company documents publicly available to support such a figure. And in its most recently filed accounts, the firm has registered total current assets of just under £52,000 and its total net worth is estimated at just over £3,200. Last month, Tamba had a County Court Judgement (CCJ) recorded against it after failing to stump up a payment of £5,000, believed to be rent for its Erdington office. The tiny debt is still outstanding, although Tamba insist that the CCJ came about because it never received the relevant invoices. Intriguingly, Ms Hammonds house in Erdington has just been sold for a figure believed to be in the £180,000 bracket. There is no suggestion that the sale was caused by Tambas recent court battle. But despite the air of mystery about just where her apparently astounding wealth comes from, Ms Hammond has continued to talk freely of her high-spending. She has also been romantically linked with a string of minor celebrities, including Scottish former Big Brother winner Cameron Stout. In just one day I bought five Marc Jacobs tailored suits, which cost up to £2,000 each, plus four designer evening dresses for about £4,000, Ms Hammond said in one recent interview. Then I just seemed to carry on shopping throughout the rest of the month. I bought several £300 Diane von Furstenburg skirts, Gucci and Dior tops, Marc Jacobs coats and Vivienne Westwood dresses, totting up about £100,000 worth of clothes in just a few days. I know it sounds like an awful lot of money, but my business deals more than covered the cost and I never spend more on clothes in a year than I give to charity, so I dont feel at all guilty. On Friday, Ms Hammond, who employs just six staff, said she was confident of her business going from success to success. Were aiming for a £1 million turnover this year, yes, she told our reporter. The new accounts come out shortly, but I dont know about the CCJ. It worries me that I dont. She later issued a statement which read: The CCJ relates to a rental payment for our offices which we sent but it seems was never received, or was credited to the wrong account. I have just issued a cheque to them for the missing payment and their solicitors will be sending me a letter of satisfaction upon receipt. Thereafter I have been advised to complete a court N244 form to have this struck from our company records. I would like to thank you for drawing this to my attention as I have never seen any paperwork relating to the matter. It would have brought our good trading name into disrepute, had we not been able to get it resolved so quickly. | 
