When Sarah Symonds reached out to Caroline Peaty, mother of Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty, her intention was clear: she wanted to offer support and solidarity to the 60-year-old during a challenging time.

Sarah’s goal was to assure Caroline that despite the current hardships, it was possible to find strength and even flourish in the face of adversity.

The source of Caroline’s distress stemmed from being excluded from her son’s opulent wedding to Holly Ramsay, daughter of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

This exclusion was a consequence of a very public and contentious dispute between the Peaty and Ramsay families. Reports emerged of the 59-year-old chef making disparaging comments about his daughter’s new mother-in-law during his wedding speech. In an exclusive conversation with the Daily Mail, Sarah shared, “I understand the trauma of such disputes [with the Ramsays]. Reaching out to Caroline opens up old wounds for me, but I do it to offer help to others.”

Sarah expresses her gratitude for reaching out, as it has led to a close friendship with Caroline.

‘One could say we are kindred spirits. Because if anyone knows what she is going through it is me.’

For Sarah, 55, knows only too well that Gordon is not a man to get on the wrong side of.

She says she had a seven-year-long affair with Gordon – something the chef has always vituperatively denied – that began after they met in 2001 in celebrity London nightclub Chinawhite.

At the time he was married to Tana and Holly, now 26, was just one year old.

Being up against ‘Team Ramsay,’ as Sarah puts it, is seemingly not for the faint-hearted. Indeed, when their alleged affair was reported in 2008, Gordon instantly denied all, calling Sarah ‘a complete slapper’.

She, for her part, insists she cared for him deeply.

And so in November last year, with headlines swirling about Caroline and the Ramsays, Sarah set about searching for her on Facebook, compelled say she was thinking of her.

Online, there were several women of the same name, but one account stood out with a snap of an Olympic medal as its profile picture.

Sarah – who lives 140 miles away from Caroline’s Staffordshire home in Newport, South Wales – says she knew ‘instantly’ it had to be her, and wrote Caroline a note on Facebook Messenger, hoping she would see it.

‘I was thrilled when I found Caroline, and decided I would message her straight away. I told her I was sending her my support,’ says Sarah.

‘I wanted her to know I thought the way Gordon and his family were treating her was terrible. I just felt so sad for her and wanted to try to make her feel a bit better.

‘She replied, and then she asked me to be her Facebook friend. Now we’ve become close.’

So much so that the pair’s friendship has since expanded to include Caroline’s sister, Adam’s auntie Louise – a trio Sarah describes as a ‘support group’, underpinned by ‘sisterhood solidarity’.

Indeed, Louise, a former lawyer, had been so enraged by the Ramsays’ treatment of Caroline that she publicly took Holly to task online, saying: ‘You have inflicted a hurt on my sister that will take a very long time to heal, if ever.’

In short, then, here is a scenario where Gordon Ramsay’s alleged ex-mistress, his daughter’s heartbroken mother-in-law and her aggrieved sister have formed something of a nexus against him.

Surely, such a potentially explosive scenario beats any of the celebrity chef’s past kitchen nightmares.

Sarah tells me that her bond with Caroline is the real deal: they have swapped telephone numbers, talk on Facebook Messenger and have sent voice notes to one another.

‘We have developed a lovely friendship. We are talking about meeting up, which will be so nice,’ says Sarah.

Such a meeting would surely be made easier because Caroline’s adored grandson, George – Adam’s young son from a previous relationship – also lives in Newport, near Sarah.

‘We talk about lots of things,’ Sarah continues. ‘Caroline talks about her health, my health [Sarah has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer], she has been so supportive of me caring for my very elderly parents. She takes a big interest in my five pet dogs.

‘And, yes, we have spoken about the wedding.’

Adam, 31, of course, married Holly on December 27 in the stunning surroundings of Bath Abbey.

Sarah says: ‘Caroline and I have been in touch since and it is all really sad. Both she and Louise have said they are not really okay.’

The row between Caroline and the Ramsays started when Holly is said to have taken a dislike to the outfit Caroline had chosen to wear for her nuptials.

It soon escalated when Caroline was not asked to Holly’s hen-do and her invitation to the wedding was dramatically withdrawn.

She, Adam’s father nor his two brothers were present for the lavish event.

Caroline had told this newspaper that prospect was devastating. In an exclusive interview before the nuptials, she said: ‘I don’t think they understand how much they have hurt me; it’s as if they have cut my heart out.’

Only Adam’s sister, Bethany, who was a bridesmaid, attended.

Sarah says that she and Caroline have since spoken about Bethany’s attendance and say they discussed how her inclusion in the wedding party was down to her being ‘pretty enough for the Ramsays’ – a reference to the carefully curated photos of the wedding that have been since revealed by influencer Holly.

Which, presumably, leads one to think that Caroline believes she has been excluded by her son’s new in-laws because she somehow didn’t meet the grade for their highly polished social media image.

‘It’s heartbreaking. Especially because Caroline is just lovely,’ says Sarah. ‘After all, she didn’t judge me. She’s a married woman, she could have called me a slapper too – but instead she asked me how on earth I ever dealt with the Ramsays.’

‘Louise has also been lovely. She keeps saying thank you to me for being so kind to her sister.

‘I do believe that I am the only person experienced enough to help them. They asked me what on earth I saw in Gordon and why I gave him the time of day.

‘They are decent people trying to navigate him, so I told Caroline to stay strong and not to let anyone bully her. She promised she wouldn’t. She said she didn’t know how I had coped with it all on my own.’

Sarah is keen to emphasise that any of the high emotions she has heard expressed by Caroline – a devoted mother who rose at 4am every morning to take her talented young son to his swimming training – have been directed one way: at Gordon.

‘Caroline has never run down Adam to me,’ says Sarah. ‘Gordon yes, Adam no.’

And who, really, could blame her? Not only did the fallout with the Ramsays lead to her missing her beloved son’s wedding day, but reportedly being mocked by Gordon during his father-of-the bride speech at the reception at exclusive Kin House in the Cotswolds was a further body blow.

In front of the guests at the reception Gordon is said to have commented on how beautiful Holly looked and told Adam he was a ‘lucky man’.

He then said: ‘Look at Tana and that’s what you have to look forward to.’ Then, in a sly dig at Adam’s parents, he told Holly: ‘Shame you don’t have the same.’

All this, says Sarah, shows the intense hypocrisy of Gordon.

‘He said that about Tana – but he himself didn’t think he was such a lucky man because he looked at me,’ says Sarah. ‘It’s very hypocritical to tell Adam to look at Tana when looking at her wasn’t, in my opinion, enough to keep him faithful to her. You couldn’t make it up.’

As for Gordon’s highly public online declarations of excitement about Holly and Adam’s wedding, Sarah is scathing.

‘The sheer audacity of this man makes me want to throw up. Has Gordon no shame? To stand there and pontificate family values? Don’t make me laugh.

‘His behaviour is 100 per cent hypocritical. Gordon broke his marital vows with me. When he was walking Holly to the altar, the aisle should have swallowed him up.

‘Holly was a baby when he was out living a single man’s life, going to Chinawhite and meeting me but he seems to have forgotten all of that.’

Sarah also takes aim at Gordon for allowing Holly to wear her mother Tana’s 1996 wedding dress for part of her own ceremony, saying: ‘The fact Gordon allowed her to wear it, applauded the fact and revelled in it, was one of the strangest things I could personally think of after what happened with me and him.’

It was in 2008 that Sarah claimed in the now-defunct tabloid newspaper the News of the World that she’d had an affair with Gordon, which she says began five years after he married Tana, his loyal wife and mother of his six children.

Sarah says their relationship began when she was 31 and Gordon was 36, after they met in the VIP area of Chinawhite. This, in the early Noughties, was a hang out for Premier League footballers, soap stars and glamour model Katie Price – hardly where you’d expect to find a Michelin starred chef.

Despite this, Sarah says she hit it off with Gordon. He reportedly told her his marriage was in trouble and she claims they later slept together.

She said the relationship that followed was ‘on-off’, and saw them spending clandestine nights together at various swanky hotels in Los Angeles and London. While she idolised him, she says he carefully avoided any talk of a future.

Then, in November 2008 they were spotted by reporters. Sarah then gave them an interview.

At the time Gordon wrote her claims off as ‘bull’ and later added: ‘Come on, if I really wanted to cheat it wouldn’t be with a complete slapper.’

Fortuitously for Gordon, the story died away and he and Tana remain married.

And where once Sarah had love for him, today there is only loathing.

‘Gordon is a narcissist,’ she fumes. ‘That’s what he is. [People like him] want their own way and attack others to deflect from their own shortcomings.’

All in all, Sarah sees many commonalities between how she and Caroline have been treated by Gordon. ‘There is no remorse. I think he is completely disconnected from the world and the people he is hurting, and the impact his behaviour has had on people like Caroline and her family.’

For now, though, Sarah is focusing on enjoying her new friendship with Caroline and Louise, and believes it will be a genuine, long-lasting one.

‘I am proud of Caroline, for her class and her grace. I told her: ‘Be grateful Caroline, you got lucky. You are way too good for them.”