Cheeky Fern Britton flashes her tummy tattoo during return to This Morning

Fern, who presented the daily ITV programme for 10 years until 2009, appeared as a guest to speak about her two new TV shows, one of which sees her travel to Jerusalem to follow the path of Jesus’s final days.

Fern, 59, showed Eamonn and Ruth a new tattoo of a cross inked on her wrist and explained its meaning.

She said: “It’s very small, it’s very discreet, and it is explained in the film that pilgrims from years ago, the Knights Templar, would go and have these tattoos done and it’s like a passport stamp.”

Asked by Ruth if it was her first tattoo, Fern flashed a grin, stood up with her back to the cameras and pulled at the waistband of her trousers to show off another inking of two butterflies on her lower stomach.

Reacting with surprise, Ruth said: “Oh no, it’s not her first!”

Fern’s husband, This Morning’s resident chef Phil Vickery – who was in the studio’s kitchen – put his head in his hand and laughed, pretending to be embarrassed by her actions.

The TV star got the tattoo – her first – at the age of 53, just above her hip.

Fern joked that Phil “wouldn’t speak to me after I did it”.

She added: “He went ‘I thought I knew you!’ It was like I had an affair.”

Fern, who is also fronting a new cookery programme devised by Gordon Ramsay, entitled Culinary Genius, said being back at her old workplace was “lovely”, adding that she was “excited” to see some of her former colleagues.

She said working with Gordon on the ITV programme, which starts on Easter Monday at 3pm, was fun and described him as “like a naughty little brother”.

“He’s very, very funny, there is a lot of fruity chat which obviously won’t end up in the show,” the former Ready Steady Cook presenter said.

Fern’s other programme, Fern Britton’s Holy Land Journey, airs on BBC One at 9am on Good Friday.