Celebrity chef Rick Stein has opened up about his awkward first meeting with his second wife, Sarah Burns.

The 78-year-old met Sarah, who is 20 years his junior, in her native country Australia when she was working as a publicist for a restaurant competition he was judging.

After speaking to her on the phone to discuss travel arrangements, the chef previously described her as “breezy with an abrupt sense of humour”.

Rick insisted she lived up to this description during their first face-to-face meeting when she issued him some stern words.

Recalling the moment, he shared: “She said, ‘We leave tomorrow at quarter to eight, don’t be late’. So, I didn’t think that was going to end up particularly well.”

However, as they spent more time together, Rick found that they had more in common than he thought.

“I suppose the thing about her was, she came from a very similar background to me,” he explained on the Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth podcast last year.

“She’d had plenty of alcoholics in her family, as indeed did I. So, there was just a sort of feeling that I was talking to somebody that came from same sort of emotional background, I suppose.”

The pair fell for each other and began an affair while he was still married to his long-term wife Jill, with whom he has three children.

Their romance, which at times was long-distance, remained a secret for five years until Jill reportedly discovered their international phone calls and confronted the pair.

Following their split, Rick returned to Sarah and they married in 2011.

The chef previously addressed the scandal in an interview with The Times magazine, explaining that his marriage to Jill had suffered due to the pressures of their business.

“The business was eating us alive,” he confessed. “What happened had nothing to do with Jill.

“It’s more to do with the nature of the restaurant business – it’s just so b****y demanding.”

He went on to say: “We didn’t have a life outside the business and we kind of fell out of love. I’d never [been unfaithful] before and I certainly won’t do it again, that’s for sure. I’m just so happy now.

“Obviously, it’s not great for the person who has been left, but it’s not great for you either.”

Rick Stein’s Cornwall airs on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.