'My five-year marriage to MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace was utter hell'

Gregg Wallace, who has stepped down from his role on BBC's MasterChef amid a probe into his behaviour, has had four wives, including former pastry chef Denise Lovell

Gregg Wallace's second wife described her marriage to the former MasterChef presenter as "utter hell," it has today emerged.

A never-been-seen-before interview details Denise Lovell's ill-fated relationship with former market trader Gregg, which ended in 2004 and left Denise, a former pastry chef, struggling to make ends meet.

She suffered a complete nervous breakdown as the two children she shared with Gregg left her home to live with their dad in Whitstable, Kent. Denise lifted the lid on her marriage in a tell-all interview in 2012, which hasn't been published - until now - as multiple women have accused Gregg, 60, of inappropriate behaviour, groping and sexual harassment. Denise happily gave the media an insight into living with the TV host, for the information to be shared whenever timely.

Denise spoke shortly after Gregg's marriage to third wife - biology teacher Heidi Brown - collapsed. Asked what Heidi's marriage to Gregg might have been like, Denise's conclusion was damning: "If my own experience is anything to go by it will have been utter hell and very, very lonely."

Denise sadly died in 2017, five years after the interview with the Daily Mail was carried out and 13 years after she divorced Gregg. By this time, Gregg was with his fourth wife, Anne-Marie Sterpini, to whom he remains married now.

In her interview, Denise described the broadcaster as a womaniser obsessed with sex and said he "was always in charge of the money". However, Denise said she was besotted with Gregg in the early days, after nine years of dating, the pair married in 1999. By this time, they'd had two children.

Things soon changed, though, and Denise said she became concerned about Gregg's behaviour. The pastry chef added: "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."

Wallace himself has admitted in his 2012 autobiography Life On A Plate: "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."

Multiple women have now come forward to make complaints about the presenter's behaviour stretching back nearly two decades. The BBC has started an external review to fully and impartially investigate the allegations and Gregg, originally from Peckham, southeast London, has quit his role on MasterChef for the time being.