'WE'RE MADE FOR EACH OTHER'

ACTOR JAMIE LOMAS AND DENTIST JESS BELL ON THEIR EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

- SUSAN LEE

With hindsight the man-bag should have given the game away. As Jess Bell prepared to fly off for a romantic break with actor boyfriend Jamie Lomas, she couldn’t help but wonder why he was insisting on packing such an odd item.

“He’d never used one before and, to be honest, it was a pretty ugly thing but he was adamant he needed it to hold his bits and pieces. I knew I should have been suspicious!” laughs Jess.

And she was right. Alongside his wallet and phone, Jamie, best known as Hollyoaks bad boy Warren Fox, was also carrying a stunning engagement ring – as well as the nervous expectation of finding just the right moment to pop the question.

That came a few days later as the couple shared a candlelit meal at a restaurant near the beach in Cancún, Mexico.

“I had been planning it for a while and I wanted it to be perfect,” admits 48-year-old Jamie, sitting next to Jess in the extended kitchen of the home they share in a quiet, leafy Manchester suburb.

“We’d been in Lake Como a few weeks earlier but we both adore Mexico and I thought, ‘Where better than in our favourite restaurant in our favourite resort in our favourite country?’”

But with subterfuge worthy of his shady on-screen character, Jamie was determined not to do anything by halves.

“I suggested we should tell the restaurant it was my birthday – that way they might come out with sparklers, champagne and stuff and make a fuss.

“It was the perfect distraction because that’s just what happened and it meant Jess didn’t have a clue what was going on,” he recalls with a mischievous grin.