HE was divorced for a third time, slugging 28 pints a week and in grave danger of a heart attack.
But seven years on, MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace is four stone lighter, has a six-pack and is wed to a beautiful woman 22 years his junior.
Aged 55, he has turned his life around.
At his heaviest he was getting on for 17st and his doctor feared for his heart because of high cholesterol.
But after hitting the gym in 2017, Gregg has become a surprise fitness freak.
This, and healthy grub cooked by his 33-year-old caterer wife Anna, has worked magic on his waist.
When I pull up to his house near Headcorn, Kent, he is there with the big smile I know from years of watching him on MasterChef.
But instead of the usual ironed shirt and chinos, he is in gym kit.
“Welcome!” he says. “Come in. Let me put the kettle on.”
I can’t bring myself to go indoors, though, because his garden is such a marvel — two large ponds and rolling fields down to the countryside.
His two French bulldogs then bound up.
“They like you!” he beams.
I then do get a house tour.
“This is us all on a family holiday to Italy, we love that place,” he says, pointing to a big picture on the wall in his lovely country kitchen.
It doesn’t take long to meet the family.
Into the kitchen comes Anna — then her Italian parents Massimo and Rina, holding Gregg and Anna’s one-year-old Sid, and then his 23-year-old daughter Libby. “High-five, buddy!” he says to Sid, who gleefully responds.
The kitchen is soon alive.
The dogs chase each other, Sid lobs lemons off the worktop, Rina fills the fridge with the day’s shop and Gregg hands out biscuits McVitie’s sent him — asking, “Guess the flavour, you’ll not believe it!” They were toast-and-marmalade flavour.
Gregg has been with Anna for seven years and is clearly proud.
“Can you believe she’s my wife?” he asks, as he taps her bum. “I know how lucky I am.”
Anna smiles and cuddles him back. She is quiet, but anyone is compared to Gregg.
“Hey, Jenny, who is this?” he asks me, as he grabs a blueberry and throws it at me. “Chuck Berry!”
Anna rolls her eyes at the joke but giggles and tells me: “Be ready for lots of those.”
The jokes are non-stop. Even after hours of taking me through his exercises, and his new fitness website, he is full of them.
“‘Doctor, what happened to the boy who swallowed the £10 note?’” he chirrups. “Doctor says, ‘Still no change’.”
Living with Anna and the in-laws, who help with housework and childcare, Gregg is clearly a happy family man.
Also, I have been to many celebrity homes before and he is the first to put on lunch.
“It’s cooked-sardine sarnies with tartare sauce,” he says. “Let’s eat!”
Gregg, not afraid to flaunt his newly ripped figure, says: “I feel better in my body now than ever.
“If I feel good enough to show that off, in a photo without my top on Instagram, why not?
“A man of any age should feel good topless.
“I’m an amazing advert for dads in their mid-fifties.
“I was known as the fat, pudding-loving man on MasterChef but now I can inspire people by saying, ‘Look at me, it’s never too late’.”
Clinically obese in his forties, it was not just a trip to the GP that shocked Gregg into shaping up, but also love.
He says: “Eight years ago I had a routine check-up and the doctor said, ‘We need to talk’.
“My cholesterol was so high if I didn’t act I was going to suffer a major heart attack.
“I was shocked but he gave me tablets and the cholesterol went down.
“But the belly stayed the same because I thought, ‘The tablets have done their job’.
“Anna looks after herself and looks fantastic, though, so I wanted to be in shape for her.
“Us old folk can’t look like a 20-year-old but we can make ourselves feel like it.
“All men should want to be in shape for their other half and if you find yourself single, like I seem to every five or six years, you want to be in the best shape you can when on the market.”
Gregg seems happier than ever and adds: “I’m on my fourth marriage but didn’t do anything different in this relationship. It’s not like I’ve changed.
“The difference is just that I’ve met someone who is as unusual as I am and loves me for who I am.
“She sees me as kind and generous and a bit mad.”
They met on Twitter seven years ago, after she messaged him asking if rhubarb goes with duck.
After looking at her photo and thinking, “Wow, she’s pretty,” a romance blossomed online.
They married in 2016 and, two years later, had little Sid.
Former greengrocer Gregg says: “I was going to be an old dad. I didn’t want to be a fat dad too.
“I’d already lost weight but becoming a dad again pushed me to keep going.
“A lot of people don’t know I’ve been a single dad-of-two for years, when I got custody of my children Libby, 23, and Tom, 26, after my second marriage to Denise.
“They were eight and ten when I took them on by myself and I wasn’t the best role model.
“I used to like us going out at weekends and I’d take us to a cafe for a fry-up breakfast, then for a curry for lunch and fish-and-chips for dinner.
“I used to think that was a great day out with my kids.
“I’ve changed our habits since and have a second opportunity with Sid.
“On my last birthday, Tom made a card with a pic of me in just shorts, saying, ‘The buffest dad ever’. That meant a lot to me.”
Gregg’s whole life had been unhealthy until his big turnaround.
He says: “My mum was an awful cook so we had lots of ready meals, pies and chips.
“I’ve always liked desserts and chocolate so I’d fill up on these too.
“At school I always had extra portions of the jam sponge and custard.
“I wasn’t into sports. Instead I started going to the pub from about 15.
“But I was never fat then. In fact, I was so skinny my mum took me to the doctor’s because she was so worried.
“I left home at 15.
“I’d been thrown out of school so got manual work and lived off kebabs.
“Sometimes I’d go to McDonald’s and order a Big Mac, quarter-pounder with cheese, fries and Filet-O-Fish. By the time I started my fruit-and-veg business at 24 I was also drinking multiple pints of beer a day and smoking 60 cigarettes.
“The business took off and by the time I was 30 I was employing 40 people and being taken out for lunches.”
After the chance to judge MasterChef came up in 2005, his weight ballooned. Gregg says: “I had all this incredible food to eat all day and after work we’d go to the pub.
“I got huge. I had a 40in waist and had to get specially made jackets long enough to cover my belly.
“I hated the sight of myself on TV.”
His weight fluctuated until 2017, when he met personal trainer Danny Rai.
He says: “I was going to the gym a few times a week but just sort of wandering about not knowing what I was doing.
“I was introduced to Danny and signed up.
“He said, ‘Mate, you can have the body you want at any age’. He made exercise fun and I couldn’t believe how good I felt.
“But he had a word about my diet, and Anna started cooking us healthier meals.
“The weight fell off and my fitness sky-rocketed.
“Anna helped me cut down on booze, too, and now I’m a ‘mindful drinker’. I used to keep drinking until I went to bed.
“But she’s taught me you don’t need to do that, you can just have two drinks and still get that same lovely feeling.”
Gregg has now launched an online fitness and diet programme, Show Me Fit, featuring his home workouts and Anna’s recipes.
He says: “Diets are stupid. You just need to put in a little exercise a few times a week and eat more balanced meals.”
With obese people warned they are 33 per cent more likely to die from Covid-19, Gregg says: “Fitness is so relevant now.
“Being in my fifties and male already put me at risk.
“But if I was obese and still smoking, I’d be in trouble.”
He also reveals he has had bouts of anxiety in his career.
He says: “I had it once I had done a few series of MasterChef. I was from lowly beginnings, suddenly successful and worried it would all disappear.
“My PA told me to get help because I used to tell her I wasn’t good enough, or funny enough, or didn’t look good enough for TV.
“I did seek help but it’s been the weight loss that has really got rid of those feelings. And let me tell you, the moment you lose weight, you get a lot more work on telly.”
In lockdown with family, he says: “I’m loving it, and staying fit. I’m the happiest I’ve been. I feel lucky.”
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