Gemma Atkinson was left "mortified" following an incident with Gorka Marquez. Gemma, 41, encountered Gorka while participating in Strictly Come Dancing in 2017.

Gemma was paired with professional dancer Aljaž Škorjanec, and they ended up as one of the runners-up in the series. Gorka, on the other hand, was partnered with former X Factor champion Alexandra Burke, and they too made it to the final. However, Gemma and Gorka's relationship flourished and a year later they confirmed they were an item. They announced their engagement on Valentine's Day in 2021.

They are now parents to Mia and Thiago. In the early stages of their relationship, the couple took a holiday to Tenerife, where they were photographed enjoying time together on the beach.

Reminiscing about their first holiday together on their Lost in Translation podcast, Gemma said: "That's the one of us where those horrible pap pictures came out and I was mortified. It was Tenerife wasn't it, straight after the tour we went. Those awful pictures came out of us on the beach."

Gorka replied: "It wasn't awful, we were just playing on the beach, it was the last day, and it was like a quiet beach."

He added: "We ordered food and the food came, so we were sat between two sunbeds, eating food, she was sat and then asked if I would put her suncream [on]."

Gorka joked that he decided to playfully squirt the suncream on Gemma rather than helping her apply it properly. He explained: "I was making a joke, instead of doing the suncream I squeezed the bottle of suncream all over her, so it was on her face.

"At the same time, 500m away in the cliffs was this random paparazzi deciding to take pictures."

Gemma described the photographer as "alright" and said he "grassed up" the source who revealed the couple's whereabouts. She explained: "That pap, he was alright, and we asked him, I was like, 'Genuinely, we booked this so privately, who did you find out we were coming here?' But he told us that the airline we booked with told the agency what flight we were on.

"They got on the same flight and trailed us from the airport to the hotel, so he said, 'I knew you were at that hotel'. It was fine, because he had a job to do, but since then we have always booked in a different way."

Gemma remarked that Gorka, 35, "was young" during their Canary Islands getaway. She added: "He was pretending to wipe semen on my face in the form of suncream and that's the pap shot.

"So yeah, he was young. Crikey, and people were like, 'Oh my god, you're disgusting, you so obviously set that up.' No, I didn't, I would have set one up breathing in, on all fours."