Former National Lottery host Anthea Turner has confirmed she will marry her lover Grant Bovey later this year - but admits she has done nothing to plan the big day.

The 39-year-old, who divorced ex-Radio One DJ Peter Powell last September, said she would love to wed fiance Grant Bovey at her Twickenham home.

But in an interview with Lorraine Kelly on breakfast show GMTV, Ms Turner revealed her preparations had barely started.

"I'm quite excited because I'm going to get married this year," she said.

"I'm saying this, and we've done nothing about it at all."

Lying low

Asked if she would like to get married at home, the television star of Blue Peter and Wish You Were Here said she wanted to hold "a good party" to apologise to relatives for the turmoil of having her private life scrutinised in the media.

She said: "I think I'd love to. I don't think I could get married abroad, because I always say that I've put all my close friends and family through two years of hell and I owe them a good party."

Ms Turner, whose engagement to Grant Bovey, 38, was announced by him last October, also revealed she had been lying low recently to recover from her non-stop work schedule throughout the 90s.

"I needed to," she said. "At least since 1990, I've been in this seven-days-a-week work tunnel and occasionally you just have to get off the merry-go-round, just to settle everything down and sort everything out.

"I still love television, I'm still going to get back on it, but I needed to do it for me and in some ways I felt that, from a work point of view, I'd earned the right to be able to get off."

Reflecting on the "soap opera-like" exposure brought by her relationship with Bovey and split from Powell, she added: "It was crazy, I have to say, nothing that I didn't bring upon myself, and as much as we like to whinge about the whole media and press factor, it is part of the job.

"Sometimes I think they do go a bit too far.

"I have to say it was awful, but you get through these things."