A mum from Lowestoft has expressed her joy and shock after winning a competition on Kirstie Allsopp's Handmade Christmas show.

Alice Neal, who lives in Lowestoft with her husband and five sons, won the 'Jumper' competition episode which was aired on Channel 4 on Wednesday (December 15).

A keen knitter and jeweller lined up alongside a solicitor from Bath, a fashion designer from Islington, London and a theatre photographer from Cornwall in the popular show.

Mrs Neal travelled down to Devon to film the show and described the experience of featuring on national TV as "completely bonkers".

Mrs Neal said: "We moved to Lowestoft in August down from County Durham and even then it was a surreal experience.

"My Instagram was going mad because Tom Daley was using my knitting pattern at the Tokyo Olympics.

"On the back of that I was invited to take part in Kirstie's show and at first I was very hesitant to travel down to Devon and film it all.

"But my dad inspired me to go on it and I thought, why not?"

Mrs Neal created a sensory Christmas jumper because her son Teddy has autism.

The judges decided her Christmas jumper was the best out of the other three contestants.

"When I found out I had won it took a while to sink in," she said.

"The jumper has everything Teddy likes on it so it was so great to know the judges appreciated it.

"The competition wasn't too stressful either, nothing like Bake Off or anything like that.

"Just four people knitting for two and a half hours which was quite nice."

This is not Mrs Neal's first brush with fame, after knitting Simon Cowell's dogs Christmas jumpers a few years ago for ITV's Text Santa.

But for now she will focus on her knitting in Lowestoft.

"I think for now I am going to focus on knitting quietly and regaining some composure after all of this," she said.

"It was such a good experience though and I will continue to focus on coming up with knitting designs and running my jewellery business as well as our beard oil business which I run with my husband."