Melanie Sykes: Gino D'Acampo is hilarious

Melanie Sykes: Gino D'Acampo is hilarious
Melanie Sykes: Gino D'Acampo is hilarious (Image credit: PA Wire/PA Photos)

TV presenter Melanie Sykes has confessed that she finds it hilarious when chef Gino D'Acampo pounces on unsuspecting audience members during their show Let's do Lunch With Gino And Mel. The 41-year-old admitted she had yet to find a woman who wasn't in love with the former I'm A Celebrity... champion - including herself. "He'd go into the audience and literally snog people," she said. "I had a friend in the audience last year and he literally had her - she was beetroot! I thought it was hilarious. "But yeah, he's a terrible flirt. But we all love him for it." Melanie added that she finds the live format of the show exciting, given the fact that anything can happen. "To be honest, the biggest thrill is that it's live and therefore whenever something goes slightly squiffy you have to roll with it, and I enjoy that," she said. "I love that even though we have a format and food to prepare, it has a very relaxed essence to it and that's because I'm relaxed and Gino's relaxed. "And I love finding out about the guests in ways that you don't normally get on a chat show," she added, "because it's all about food and their food related history, it brings up stories from their childhood which they don't talk about normally. It's special on lots of levels."

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.