Even though they announced their separation last month, Chantelle Houghton has said she’s still in love with husband Preston - just the pressure to be “this perfect couple” became too much for her.

Chantelle met the Ordinary Boys’ singer on Celebrity Big Brother at the start of last year and they married in August. However the speed of the coupling gave rise to accusations that it was a publicity stunt to cash in on their sudden reality TV fame. Chantelle told OK magazine recently: “It hurts me to think that people think my marriage wasn’t real.”

“I shared a bed with him, I did things with him that you wouldn’t do if it was a publicity stunt.”

“We’re still in love with each other, and that hurts so much because it just didn’t work out.”

“We both said, we can’t do this any more, we can’t go on hurting each other like this.”

Since announcing their split, Chantelle has moved out of their marital home in Brighton back to her native Essex and she added: “I found living in Brighton very hard… I had no family, no friends and it was a really hard time for me.”