Angellica Bell crowned the winner of Celebrity MasterChef

ANGELLICA BELL has been named the Celebrity MasterChef champion for 2017, beating Ulrika Jonsson and Dev Griffin in the nail-biting finale.

The TV presenter, 41, has said there are no hard feelings from her husband Michael Underwood – who reached the final of the show in 2012 but did not win – and that he is “so proud” of her achievement.

Bell wowed judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace with her three-course meal of a Camembert, fig and onion tart followed by a pan-fried halibut and prawns, and a pear Bourdaloue for dessert.

Before that, Bell, presenter Jonsson and radio DJ Griffin were tasked with taking part in the daunting Chef’s Table challenge, in which they had to cook a Michelin-star standard three-course meal hosted by three Michelin-starred chef Jason Atherton.

Reflecting on the moment she discovered she had won, Bell told the Press Association: “I remember they announced the results and I literally think I was in shock for ages.

“I felt like I was in a bubble.”

She said she spent some time with the MasterChef team before realising she had to phone her husband to break the news.

Bell said: “My phone wasn’t on me, and once I got to my phone it had been ringing and ringing from Michael. He knew the timings because he’d done it before, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I won!’

“And he was literally screaming down the phone. He was so happy, he was so pleased. And I think he was living all the emotions again, so he was chuffed to bits.

“I think he was just really proud of me.”

Bell said she feels she and fellow TV presenter Underwood, who have two children together, are still on an “even keel” when it comes to their cooking skills, despite her going one better to win the BBC One programme.

“Michael always says I’m the better cook, though,” Bell said. “He says I’ve got a knack in terms of presentation and patience, that I’m naturally better.

“He’s really good at precision … I’m a bit more experimental, and he goes a bit more by the book.”

Judge Wallace said of Bell’s success: “Angellica is one of the best Celebrity MasterChef contestants I have ever seen, her food has elegance and style.

“As the competition has gone on she has got technically better. I think she is a very, very worthy winner.”

Torode said: “Angellica makes sure everything that she does is done to absolute perfection. Throughout this competition Angellica has pushed herself.

“Give her an opportunity to learn, she sucks it up and does it brilliantly.”

Bell said she would love to embark on food-related endeavours going forward and follow in the footsteps of previous Celebrity MasterChef winner Lisa Faulkner.

She hopes to learn more about Caribbean food and has been inspired by her gran, who was a cook, to try to learn and recreate some of her beloved recipes.

“I don’t want to say, ‘this is what I want to do’, I just think if things come to me, I would definitely embrace them,” she said.

“I didn’t realise how passionate I was about food and how it can make you feel, how you feel preparing it and how you feel when you know someone enjoys it.”

Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace says co-star John Torode was given dressing-down by BBC after saying they ‘weren’t friends’