Marco Pierre White wife: 'Our reunion was a sham'

Marco Pierre White's estranged wife Mati Conejero has branded their supposed reunion as a sham.

The celebrity chef asked a judge to call off his £50m divorce in January after the couple allegedly had a "fabulous Christmas together". However, Conejero has now told the Daily Mail that they had simply called a truce as court costs mounted.

She further confessed to the Mail On Sunday that she is no longer romantically involved with White and never moved back to their £2.5m marital home in West London.

"There was no reconciliation, no Christmas together," she claimed. "The divorce had cost us £3 million. I had paid out nearly £1 million to lawyers and had to hand over a £250,000 diamond ring Marco had given me to help pay the legal bills.

"We met the weekend before the court case in January... [the divorce] was draining me financially and in every way that's important. It became my life, with legal papers everywhere. Marco made some sense and there wasn't really any money to carry on.

"Since we came to this agreement, whatever you want to call it, since we dropped the divorce, I've become the person I was before I met Marco."

White has so far refused to comment on the allegations.

The couple, who have two teenage sons, met in 1993 and married in April 2000. They began divorce proceedings in 2007 amid claims of the MasterChef Australia star's infidelity.