'I dreamt up a phone number and found my bride to be'

When it refused to go away, he decided to call it.

It turned out to belong to Michelle Kitson, at the time a 17-year-old student living with her parents more than 60 miles away.

Even the most die-hard romantic would have forgiven her for ignoring a message from a strange man she had never met or heard of before.

But she decided to respond and after a string of text messages, a phone call and a letter the couple met and fell in love.

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Now they have just returned from their honeymoon in Goa, southern India - and still can't believe their luck.

"She really is the girl of my dreams," said Mr Brown, now 24, from Harefield, North-West London.

Recalling how they met, he said: "I went out for a quiet night with some mates and ended up having a few to drink. When I woke up this number just kept running through my head."

Thinking that perhaps someone had given him the number in the pub, Mr Brown decided to send a text message asking: "Did I meet you last night?"

By coincidence Michelle was only a few miles away, in a car with her parents travelling through Watford, when she noticed the message.

After she responded: "Who are you and where are you from?" it became obvious that there was no connection between the two.

They continued to chat by text message, however, and days later she plucked up the nerve to make a phone call. Mr Brown sent her a letter containing his photograph and she agreed to meet so he travelled to her home city of Cambridge.

Arriving early he telephoned the number again, to see a young woman answering the phone on the other side of the road. "It was love at first sight for me - I loved everything about her," said Mr Brown, who moved to Cambridge to be with Miss Kitson.

"I've no idea how I ended up with her number in my head - it's only a few digits different from mine."

His bride said she had found the initial encounter "spooky" but she was captivated from the start.

"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked. My mum and dad kept saying, 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it. I hadn't had a boyfriend before. Those first text messages were a real adrenaline rush.

"I believe that things happen for a reason. There is no way someone could have said my number in the pub, but he had that number in his head.

"I know some people will find it hard to believe, but we know the truth."

As for the wedding day, the bride - who stands 5ft 4in to her husband's 6ft 7in - said: "It was fantastic, we couldn't have wished for a better day.

"The weather had been awful, but when we went to the church it was beautiful sunshine."

Professor Heinz Wolff, emeritus professor of Brunel University, said: "Whatever else it is a charming story but I would be against a supernatural explanation. It is likely the number of this girl was mentioned in the pub and somehow this young man overheard it, even without realising, and his subconscious remembered it."

He said the probability of a "random" phone number leading to a suitable woman of the right age was actually quite high.

"Say for argument's sake that every 100 phone numbers lead to five girls, the probability of the event they describe is not so remote as you might think. A few thousand to one would be my guess.

"The sheer romantic background would have increased the chance of some relationship being formed, which would have increased the probability somewhat."