She is the former supermarket checkout girl who won The Apprentice and went to work for Sir Alan Sugar.

Now, as these pictures show, Michelle Dewberry is focusing her attention on a younger and – by all accounts – more cheerful entrepreneur in the form of well-heeled dotcom millionaire Jamie Murray Wells.

According to a friend of the couple, Murray Wells, an Old Harrovian who founded spectacles company Glasses Direct and is a member of Prince William’s inner circle, has been dating Michelle for the past two months.

Enlarge 

The look of love: A smiling Michelle and Jamie

They met – where else? – at a business seminar in London in April and hit it off ‘pretty much immediately’, visiting New York for a romantic break shortly afterwards.

Since then, they have become a regular fixture among Jamie’s group of friends, frequenting several nightclubs in London, including his favourite haunt, Mahiki.

Prince William, who has known Murray Wells since childhood, is said to have met Michelle at least once already.

‘Jamie’s definitely keen on Michelle,’ said the friend. ‘On Friday night he even went to watch her take part in a recording of the Channel 4 programme The Sunday Night Project, hosted by Jordan and Peter Andre.’

The couple hold hands as they walk

While the pair’s burgeoning relationship may be based in part on a mutual love of doing deals and making money, they are living proof that opposites attract.

Snobbier friends even refer to them jokingly as ‘the Posh and Becks of the business world’ because of the difference in their backgrounds.

Friend: Prince William

Jamie, 25, who is often compared to a young Sir Richard Branson, grew up in the well-upholstered surroundings of a Gloucestershire farm which neighbours Prince Charles’s estate, Highgrove.

His father, Simon, is an investment analyst. His mother, Alison, imports goods from Morocco.

Jamie went to Harrow and then the University of the West of England, in Bristol, where he was known for carrying out sophisticated practical jokes.

He set up Glasses Direct – which sells glasses online at a fraction of the cost of those available on the High Street – from scratch during his final term at university in 2004 with the remnants of a student loan.

The company is already a genuine rival to established giants such as Specsavers. Its projected turnover for 2008 is £10million.

Michelle, 29, is from Hull, East Yorkshire. Her childhood was scarred by her violent, alcoholic father and the death in 1996 of her elder sister, Fiona.

Michelle left school aged 16 with two GCSEs and through sheer self-determination worked her way up from the checkout counter in a Kwik Save supermarket to running her own telecoms business aged 24.

It was in 2006 that she won The Apprentice – the final of this year’s competition is on BBC1 this Wednesday – and she took a £100,000-a-year job working within a subsidiary division of Sir Alan’s business, Amstrad.

Sir Alan and Michelle after winning The Apprentice in 2006

But having become pregnant by a fellow contestant on the show, Syed Ahmed, she had a miscarriage and left Amstrad after a few months.

She subsequently set up her own consultancy, Michelle Dewberry Ltd.

She is also an ambassador for Prince Charles’s charity, the Prince’s Trust.