Celebrity chef Marco Pierre White has snapped up his second pub in Wiltshire.

The Horse and Groom at Charlton is his second acquisition in Wiltshire, after the Pear Tree Inn at Whitley near Melksham, and becomes his ninth to be branded a Wheelers Inn.

Mr White, who grew up on a Leeds council estate, trained under Albert Roux at Mayfair’s Le Gavroche.

By the time he was 33, Marco Pierre White had become the youngest and the first British chef to be awarded three Michelin stars in England.

Mr White, who now lives in Salisbury, has presented TV programmes such as Hell’s Kitchen and Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars.

But, at the pub, he dismissed the idea of being a celebrity chef, saying: “A chef is someone who can manage, a cook stays behind the stove. I was always a cook, never a chef.”

Mr White, who gave up his Michelin stars, said: “What’s the point of going on when you’ve achieved everything you want?

“Winning three stars is the most exciting journey of a chef’s life but retaining them is very boring.”

He says he is more proud of his youngest daughter, Mirabelle, 11, who he said made him cry when she was recently accepted into the Royal Ballet.

The Horse and Groom was revamped in six weeks with Mr White’s decor, which includes vintage trains on the shelf of a new partition he says adds cosiness.

He said: “Really I should be a toymaker, not a chef.

“For me it’s about creating an environment that people want to sit in. I’ve sat in every seat in the Horse and Groom, because I want to see it from the perspective of every customer. I am a restaurateur now – rather than putting things on plates I put things on walls.”

The dishes are his recipes and he says he likes his food to be “simple and comforting”. A typical three-course meal at the Horse and Groom is £18.95.

The pub is to be managed by his other daughter Letty, 23, who has moved to Malmesbury. She has been running Mr White’s Italian restaurant Frankie’s in Knightsbridge, London.

She said it was funny going shopping in supermarkets with Mr White: “All the old ladies bump their trolleys because so they’re busy looking at my dad!”