It’s not just the food and glittering TV career that keep chef Gino D’Acampo grinning. Away from the cameras, he has a happy home life with his wife Jessica and after two decades of marriage, they couldn’t be more in love.
Gino, 47, and Jessica tied the knot in 2002 and renewed their vows in 2021 – a surprise from Gino to celebrate their anniversary. However, as we chat about what makes a joyous marriage, Gino tells us that the secret is spending some time away from one another.
“You need to balance your married life with your ‘single life’,” says Gino, who shares children Luciano, 21, Rocco, 19, and Mia, 11, with Jessica. “There is a time where the family is together, when I’m with my wife and everybody to celebrate holidays and everything like that. But there has to also be a time when I do things by myself and when she does things by herself.
“So, we take a lot of holidays by ourselves with our own friends, separately. We have a lot of dinners and lunches with our friends. It’s important to have your own life. You can’t be part of a couple’s life if you don’t have your own.” Gino met Jessica when he was 18 and working at Sylvester Stallone’s Mambo King restaurant in Marbella, where she was a waitress. The couple married seven years later.
Gino says that seeing less of each other means there is more to discuss when they are reunited. “I can be away for a month and I will talk to my wife once a week for about 20 minutes. Then, when I come back, we can talk about it all,” he says. “Some of my friends talk with their wives for an hour and I’m thinking, ‘What the hell are you going to say to your wife every day for an hour that you can’t say when you’re in person?’”
Gino D'Acampo says 'there is no need' to call his wife when he's away for work
Gino, 47, and Jessica tied the knot in 2002 (WireImage)
He shares children Luciano, 21, Rocco, 19, and Mia, 11, with Jessica (Brian Cassey/REX/Shutterstock)Absence certainly seems to make the heart grow fonder for Gino and Jessica. We raise the point that they must also have a solid foundation of trust and Gino says that comes from understanding. “Do you think that if I wanted to be unfaithful to my wife, I’d need to organise a holiday?” he asks. “I can do it anytime and anywhere.
“I could be in London pretending I’m at work or I could be on holiday for a week. So once you get that out of your head, going on holiday alone doesn’t matter.” He also doesn’t see any issue in spending time with people of the opposite sex. “For example, last week I was out for dinner with an amazing woman that I’ve been working with,” he says.
“We had dinner together, all evening together, and then went for a couple of drinks after. It’s just dinner with another human being. If I wanted to have an affair, I could do that without the dinner and everything. You know, people can’t get their heads around it and will say, ‘Oh, my boyfriend is going out for dinner with another woman.’ First of all, we are all equal. What’s the difference?”
Independence is a trait that Gino has also instilled into his children, by encouraging them to organise presents for birthdays and special occasions by themselves. And as much as he is clearly a doting dad, he isn’t keen to follow in the footsteps of his close pal Gordon Ramsay, who last year had a sixth child with his wife Tana.
“Oh I’m done,” he assures us. “The time that I have is linked with the job that I do, so the more kids you have, the more you have to dilute your time to each member of your family. I don’t want to dilute that time any more than I do with my current three children and a wife.”
He first rose to fame with appearances on cooking shows including Ready, Steady, Cook and Great Food Live (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)It’s not surprising that Gino is loathe to divide his time even more, as he juggles a busy TV career that already finds him on every corner of our screens. He first rose to fame with appearances on cooking shows including Ready, Steady, Cook and Great Food Live, but his profile hit new heights in 2009 when he took part in – and won – I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here.
He has since become a regular on This Morning, fronted his own programmes and now presents the ITV game show Family Fortunes. And while he may not have expected to become a pillar of British television, Gino is more than grateful for it. As we chat about his rise to fame on the small screen, he describes winning I’m
A Celebrity as the moment when he realised he had been “accepted into the British family”. “I am actually going to show you something…” he says, bringing out the sceptre that every queen and king of the jungle holds when they win the show – but doesn’t get to keep. “It’s not a fake. It’s the real one,” laughs Gino. “You’re not allowed to take it but I stole it and hid it in my case. They asked me if I’d seen it and I said no. I think I have the right to keep it. I went through suffering and won!”
Alongside work and family life, Gino is also partnering the charity Love Food Hate Waste for this year’s Food Waste Action Week and is making more of an effort to cut down on food waste in his own house. He tells us that he wants to promote only buying what you need in the supermarket. “I’ve been saying for a long, long time that the way we shop and the way we buy things is wrong, so this campaign is right up my street,” he says.
“In the shops, everything is wrapped up in plastic. It’s wrong and is taking away from our experience of choosing ingredients. We are throwing away £17 billion worth of food a year because we are lazy or don’t think, it’s crazy. It has become natural for us to buy a bag of potatoes, but do we really need 20 potatoes? No, we probably need four or five, but it’s just habit. So, the aim is to try to convince as many people as possible to waste less.”
Gino D'Acampo restaurant given one star food hygiene rating after inspection
Gino has persuaded Jessica to become more savvy when food shopping, after years of nagging. “My wife is as guilty as anyone else when it comes to wasteful buying,” he says. “I’ve been telling her for years and, actually, this year I stopped moaning and she did it because of the campaign. Typical! Although, as long as someone listens, I don’t care.”
Buy loose fruit and vegetables to help tackle food waste. For more information about Food Waste Action Week, visit Food Waste Action Week 2024.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
