Gregg Wallace's second wife says she felt 'completely desperate' before BBC probe
Gregg Wallace’s second wife, Denise Lovell, who died in 2017, spoke about the “utter hell” of her marriage to the former MasterChef presenter in an unpublished interview in 2012. Pastry chef Denise began dating Gregg in 1990 and they were married from 1999 to 2004 and had two children. He was previously married to Christine for six weeks in 1991, and following his divorce from Denise, he married biology teacher Heidi Brown in 2010. They were married for just over a year. In 2013, he met his current wife, Anne-Marie and they have been married since 2016 and have a son named Sid.
Denise spoke to the Daily Mail eight years after her divorce from Gregg in an interview that they have now published. She described him as a “very sexual man” and when asked about his third marriage to Heidi, which ended after 14 months, she commented: “If my own experience is anything to go by, it will have been utter hell and very, very lonely.”
She revealed that Gregg was rarely at home, and alleged that their marriage broke down after she discovered that he was having an affair with one of his employees. She also claimed that when he left the family home, he only took the top shelf magazines he had hidden in the garage.
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In her chat with the Mail, Denise described the reason she stayed in the marriage. "I had nowhere to go. I felt completely desperate. Even though I'd worked for years, I had nothing of my own by then. I just tried to focus on being a mother. I put up with it because of the children."
In his autobiography Life On A Plate, Gregg admitted he was unfaithful to Denise. "As long as I was home when the children woke up in the morning, she could overlook the other women. That was the rule. There was her life, there was my life and there were holidays together."
Gregg is currently married to fourth wife Anne-Marie Sterpini. The couple originally connected on Twitter, when she asked him a question about a recipe, and the pair met in person in 2013. Anna, who is 21 years her husband’s junior, married Gregg in 2016, and the couple welcomed son Sid in May 2019. In an interview on Lorraine, Gregg described how they first met.
“I sent her a message and we started sending messages. Then I sent her my phone number, this was five years ago. She came down to London to have dinner with me, and she said it wasn’t until we got to the restaurant that she was comfortable it was really me and not an impostor.” He added: “I think it’s just luck, and I got very lucky this time. Very lucky.”
Gregg has recently stepped away as host of MasterChef following accusations that he has made crude sexual comments. A number of women have also accused him of sexual misconduct, charges he denies. His lawyer has stated: "It is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature".
