She was a catwalk queen model turned internationally acclaimed TV chef hailed as 'the new Nigella Lawson' and tipped to be one of the BBC's biggest stars.
But after fronting numerous TV shows in Britain and the US, and broadcast in 70 other countries globally, as well as selling a million books in the UK alone, Lorraine Pascale gave it all up and walked away from fame.
Now for the first time, the Daily Mail can reveal the full extraordinary story of how 'burned-out' Lorraine's encounter with a business guru at her gym led her to rethink her life completely - to the extent that she even gave up cooking and turned to academia instead.
As one associate told us: 'Very few people who get as successful and popular as Lorraine had been would choose to step away from that - but she is very much her own woman…and after she met her new man she soon started making some big changes.'
That man was Dennis O'Brien, a divorced father-of-two who had grown up in modest circumstances in Liverpool before founding a business consultancy empire with a £100million turnover - more of which later.
