Gino D’Acampo reveals the surprising secret of his 22-year marriage as he admits he’s living a ‘single life’ and meeting ‘other women’

Celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo has spoken out about his 22-year marriage, making the shocking admission that he sometimes lives ‘the single life’.

The Italian, 47, revealed that the secret to longevity in a relationship is actually time apart and confessed that he only talks to his wife Jessica for ’20 minutes a day’ while he is away.

Gino and his wife Jessica Morrison first met when he was 17 years old and working at Sylvester Stallone’s Mambo King restaurant in Marbella, where she was a waitress.

The couple tied the knot in 2002 and recently renewed their vows in 2021, but outside of the marriage, Gino is making the most of time for himself, disproving the idea that time spent apart could lead to affairs.

Speak with OK! MagazineGino explained, “You have to balance your married life with your ‘single life’.”

He confirmed that he enjoys spending time as a family with his wife and children, Luciano, 21, Rocco, 19, and Mia, 11. He also emphasized that he and Jessica also need time apart.

“I can be away for a month and talk to my wife for about 20 minutes once a week. Then when I come back we can all talk about it.’

The TV chef confessed that he doesn’t understand what some of his friends talk to their wives about when they’re on the phone for over an hour, as he chooses to keep his phone conversations with Jessica short and sweet.

Gino also admitted that he will go out for dinner and drinks with other women while on one of his solo vacations.

He added: ‘Do you think if I wanted to be unfaithful to my wife I would have to organize a holiday? I can do it anytime, anywhere. So once you get that out of your mind, just going on holiday doesn’t matter anymore.’

Gino previously opened up about how he met his wife in an interview on Good Morning Britain in 2022.

He revealed: ‘When I met my wife I never had any experience with other women because I was only 17. She had beautiful blonde hair and a huge…personality. And after a few weeks she showed me something I had never had before.

‘So I got there and basically all I thought was, “Am I going to get laid?”

‘Can I say that? Or I say: making love, is that better? Anyway, yes, she invited me and cooked for me.’

Hosts Ben Shephard and Susanna Reid started laughing at his anecdote and tried to keep the conversation on cooking by asking what meal she was making.

It comes after Gino was forced to defend his reputation as a businessman after he was accused of failing to hand over millions of pounds to staff and tax authorities when his pasta chain collapsed.

The star has spoken out for the first time following suggestions that he could not pay £5million to his former employees and tax following the liquidation of My Pasta Bar in 2022.

According to reports, 49 creditors have not been paid, with £4.8m owed to trade creditors, £113,975 to HMRC and £53,304 to staff.

Three London restaurants on Fleet Street, Leadenhall Market and Bishopsgate had to close two years ago.

But Gino has now hit back, insisting his philosophy was to ‘make sure your gain is greater than what you lose’.

In a final statement to creditors and members, the company had this to say: ‘On the whole, I can confirm that the realizations in the liquidation are insufficient to pay a dividend to the unsecured creditors after defraying the costs of the proceedings .’

Key stakeholders included Gino, who owned ten percent, and IRG, which had an 85 percent stake in the company, with the remaining five percent owned by Vernon Lord.

IRG is owned by Icelandic founder Malcolm Walker and CEO Tarsem Dhaliwal, after Gino previously had a food range at the supermarket giant

But speaking for the first time about the company’s apparent collapse, Gino has defended himself on the Off Air podcast.

He said of this week’s reports: ‘That’s an old story – it’s something that happened before Covid and I always say to people, I don’t really answer to things like that or I don’t really get upset about things like that. .

“I just get upset in a way where you say, ‘Wait a minute, do you understand that as a businessman, which is what I do, unless you have some failures, you’re never going to be successful?’

“The secret of what it is is making sure your gain is greater than what you lose.

‘Because no one ever talks about me opening another restaurant in Manchester, no one ever talks about me opening four new restaurants by the end of this year.

‘Nobody ever talks about the fact that I currently employ more than 1,000 people.

“Everyone is very quick to point the finger and say, ‘Ah, but, but, you closed this, you closed that.’

“Guys, in life, unless you try to do something new, you’re never going to be somebody and you’re never going to hire other people – you try some things and they go well, and some things don’t go well.

‘Like I said: the secret, what is it? It is to ensure that those who are going well are greater than those who are not going well.”

Gino was asked if there were any people left behind, such as former employees, who had not been paid.

He replied, “At that point you have to be careful not to believe everything you read.”

He again claimed it was an old story and when asked why there were new headlines in the media at the time, he added: ‘I have no idea why they were on the run today.

‘Given that, as I said, I just opened a restaurant in Manchester last week and employed 45 new people in my new restaurant, you’d think they’d have to encourage me to say, ‘Gino, come on. man, keep going, keep going. Don’t worry about failure, just keep going.”

“Because the more you go, the better this economy is going to be: you hire people, you open a new restaurant.

‘But instead of choosing the negative, they always choose the negative: why they do it, that is a question you have to ask the person who wrote the article.

‘I think life is really full of negative things. We need to celebrate positivity, we need to celebrate people’s achievements.

‘We need to recognize that people fail, but not point fingers like that. That’s not a nice way and I don’t believe in that kind of thing anyway.’