Matt Willis admits he joined Cooking with the Stars just to 'hang out' with wife Emma

Matt Willis signed up for ITV's new show Cooking with the Stars just so he could "hang out" with his wife Emma, who co-hosts the series alongside Tom Allen.

The Busted star and TV presenter have been married since 2008 but even though they are both in showbiz they rarely get to work together according to Willis, which is why he was keen to sign up for the cooking competition series, which sees celebrities be paired up with professional chefs and compete as a team.

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"I thought it would be fun! I cook quite a bit at home but it’s always the same thing over and over so I wanted to learn some new recipes," Willis said of joining the series.

"And to be honest, I wanted to hang out with Emma. We never really work together and something like this is so out of my wheelhouse so I thought why not try something a bit different, especially with Emma presenting it!"

Willis appears on the show alongside stars Peter Andre, Claire Richards, Samia Longchambon, Chris Eubank, Jason Watkins, Indiyah Polack, and Joanna Page, but it was spending time with his wife of 15 years that appealed to him the most.

Emma, for her part, said it had been "really nice" to work alongside her husband, the pair last worked together when they appeared on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here Now! in 2007, when they were still dating: "That was the last time we worked together.

"That is exactly why he signed up. He said ‘I just think it would be really nice for us to hang out together.’ He’s busy and I’m busy and we’re often ‘ships in the night’."

She added: "He loves cooking and he’s really good at cooking. He was like ‘Why would I not do it?’ I get to learn how to cook and we get to hang out together which is really nice."

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The couple share three children together, daughters Isabelle and Trixie and son Ace, and sharing insight into their home life Willis revealed that he does most of the cooking in the household: "I don’t mind doing it and Emma is quite particular so it usually takes longer.

"I’m not a massive fan of cleaning up so usually there’s a kind of rule that if you cook, you don’t clean up but that rule isn’t always obeyed and sometimes I end up doing both!"

The musician added that when he and Emma first met "all [he] ate was Pot Noodles" and it was thanks to her that he was introduced to cooking: "I lived on Pot Noodles and takeaway pizza, that was my diet.

So she would cook things and I would be like ‘Wow!' She was amazing! I never really explored anything before then."

Willis will be paired with cookery author Shelina Permalloo on the show, which is a six-part series that will see chef mentors helping their respective celebrities make a winning dish in Cooking Battles, with the bottom two fighting to keep their place in the competition.

Cooking with the Stars premieres on Tuesday, 4 July at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.

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