Smash hit

Mrs Burton Race refused to comment yesterday.

Previously, she had said that the restaurant would be sold to fund the divorce settlement. The chef has already agreed to the sale of the marital home, a £1.5 million Georgian rectory in the village of Ashprington, near Totnes.

The New Angel, which opened in 2004 and won its Michelin star eight months later, has been valued at £1,250,000 and its six-bedroom guest house, which is being sold separately, is priced at £850,000.

Mr Burton Race took his family to France for the Channel 4 series French Leave, which followed their attempts to start a new life in an unfamiliar country.

Later, after they moved back to Britain, he starred in a new series called The Return of the Chef which followed his efforts to set up his restaurant in Devon.

He described his time in the I’m a Celebrity camp as a magical experience despite heat, hunger and personality clashes with the other contestants. He added: “It has been the most memorable time I have ever had in my life.” Well, perhaps, until now.

Cooks in the soup

Rick Stein’s wife, Jill, encountered the chef’s mistress, Sarah Burns, in her husband’s seafood restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. She slapped her rival around the face, to the cheers of diners, and then divorced him

Tom Aikens’s career took off when he was sacked from the Mayfair restaurant Pied à Terre for allegedly “branding” a dozy trainee on the hand with a hot knife

Fanny Cradock, the original TV chef, never presented a show again after she upset viewers by criticising the cooking of a housewife. She stormed off a Parkinson show when she found that Danny La Rue, her fellow guest, was a man dressed as a woman Keith Floyd has been divorced four times and bankrupt twice

Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein have both been threatened by self-styled Cornish terrorists for opening restaurants in the county that only wealthy visitors can afford to eat at

Marco Pierre White’s wife, Mati, dumped his hunting trophies on the pavement outside their Knightsbridge home

Source: Times Database

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010