Melanie Sykes has told how she had to have a heart-to-heart with her eldest son about her "mistake" after the storm over her Twitter flirting with her younger fiance.
The glamorous TV presenter, 42, hit the headlines last year after she hooked up with Jack Cockings - 15 years her junior - by sending messages and saucy photos online.
And speaking about the incident to Hello! magazine, Mel said: "We were just being silly and having a joke, but the way it was put across made it more difficult to handle.
"I had to ride the wave for a couple of weeks and went away with my boys. While we were there, I did talk a little bit about the situation to my older son - I was under fire and I was struggling with it and he could sense that."
She went on: "I told him I'd made a mistake and that I'd said some things other people felt I shouldn't have done."
Mel - who posed in a skimpy swimsuit and heels for the magazine - got engaged to Jack after a four-month romance, which started when he sent her a message on Twitter.
"He is absolutely my equal," she said. "In terms of intelligence, humour, ethics, our ideas about family, we just connect on every level, and that's quite a thing to find.
"There are people who will always be cynical about my relationship with Jack because of how we got together," she said. "But he makes me happier than I've ever been and if I'm happy, my boys are happy, it's a big circle - and that's all that matters."
The full interview is in the latest edition of Hello! magazine out now.