Jock Zonfrillo ‘THE DAY I MET THE LOVE OF MY LIFE'

In this extract from his new memoir, the MasterChef Australia judge recalls the moment he knew Lauren was The One

I was at this event in Sydney, doing the schmooze thing, shaking hands, when a woman came up and introduced herself to me. She was very nice, chatty – we took a photo together, then she disappeared. Didn’t think much of it at the time.

Unbeknown to me, however, wheels had been set in motion. She was friends with Lauren Fried, a businesswoman and Aussie TV show panellist, who was in Europe on holiday recovering from a relationship gone bad. Lauren got a message from her friend with a picture of me and a sales pitch: “Loz, I’ve found the perfect guy for you. He’s European, he’s got an accent, he’s a chef. He’s everything you want in a man. He’s even a champagne ambassador!”

The mutual friend was meant to introduce us when Lauren got back to Sydney, but it never happened. Then one night Lauren was going through her phone deleting old photos and it threw up the photo her friend had taken.

She followed me on Twitter. I followed her back because I recognised her from her TV show, which I liked, so I thought she’d probably do some interesting stuff on Twitter and then... nothing.

COINCIDENCES

Then one Saturday night that October, she found the Twitter notification that I’d followed her.