Mel Sykes comes clean over Twitter flirting

(Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Melanie Sykes has told how she had to have a heart-to-heart with her eldest son about her 'mistake' after the storm over her Twitter flirting with her younger fiance.

The glamorous TV presenter, 42, hit the headlines last year after she hooked up with Jack Cockings - 15 years her junior - by sending messages and saucy photos online.

And speaking about the incident to Hello! magazine, Mel said: "We were just being silly and having a joke, but the way it was put across made it more difficult to handle.

"I had to ride the wave for a couple of weeks and went away with my boys. While we were there, I did talk a little bit about the situation to my older son - I was under fire and I was struggling with it and he could sense that."

She went on: "I told him I'd made a mistake and that I'd said some things other people felt I shouldn't have done."

Mel - who posed in a skimpy swimsuit and heels for the magazine - got engaged to Jack after a four-month romance, which started when he sent her a message on Twitter.

"He is absolutely my equal," she said. "In terms of intelligence, humour, ethics, our ideas about family, we just connect on every level, and that's quite a thing to find.

"There are people who will always be cynical about my relationship with Jack because of how we got together," she said. "But he makes me happier than I've ever been and if I'm happy, my boys are happy, it's a big circle - and that's all that matters."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.