Gino gets hot in the kitchen with Cooking Up Love

There are a few contenders out there, but Gino D’Acampo has to be one of the hardest working men in showbusiness these days.

The Italian celebrity chef and media personality’s series Gino’s Italy: Like Mamma Used to Make only finished on ITV at the end of October, while the second run of his Family Fortunes reboot has also just concluded on Sunday nights.

And then there’s his numerous other TV appearances, including Gino’s Win Your Wish List , his road trips with Gordon Ramsay and Fred Sirieix, plus restaurants, books and his supermarket cookware range.

Gino’s latest show, which begins tonight and continues tomorrow, is a dating and cooking series in which singletons learn how to cook authentic Italian food and hopefully find the perfect partner at the same time.

It will see the chef invite three food loving single students to the beautiful island of Sardinia, before they battle it out in a kitchen at his very own cookery school and cook up a storm with the aim of finding true love.

The series climaxes with a Final Feast hosted by Gino as we find out the answer to the big question: can love be found through food?

“I have always wanted to do a dating show with cooking – I think it is a really cool way to meet people and fall in love,” Gino says.

“This show is all about helping people and giving them the confidence to find love – which is so hard to do now-a- days.

“After all, it worked for my wife and I, my parents, and my grandparents – so there must be some method to the magic!

“The students were inexperienced with food, and to be honest, inexperienced with love! I tried to give all the tips that I had and what I’ve learned through 20 years of marriage and relationships. If it works for me, it should work for everyone!”

Gino’s Cooking Up Love has been made by his pal Gordon’s production company, Studio Ramsay Global.

The pair of chefs (and maitre d’ Sirieix) will be reuniting on screen early next year for Gordon, Gino And Fred: Viva Espana in which they take an RV across Andalusia and Galicia while cooking Spanish food.

But if you can’t wait until then to get your fix of the bickering trio, ITV is airing two special episodes over the festive period.

Gordon, Gino And Fred: Unseen will serve up never-before-seen action from across earlier Road Trip episodes.

“You only watch 50 per cent of the fun,” says D’Acampo of the show, suggesting that there is plenty of unaired footage.

Showbiz is a fickle world, so does Gino ever worry, in the era of cancel culture, that his candid quips or on-screen antics could burst his current bubble?

“I’m going to be extremely honest with you – I don’t really care,” he says.

“If you’re a nice person, you shouldn’t really care about what you’re going to say because you’re never going to hurt anyone. I think only malicious, bad people have to worry about stuff like that.”