The owner of one of the first Tex Mex restaurants in Britain has been killed in a plane crash, along with his girlfriend.

Brighton restaurant and bar owner Tony Baker, 52, was flying to Devon from Shoreham Airport with his partner Elaine Parry when the plane crashed in a field in the New Forest on Sunday afternoon.

The bodies of the couple were found by a farmer next to the wreckage of the light aircraft at Snooks Farm, South Baddesley, near Lymington, Hampshire.

Air accident investigators are looking into the cause of the crash of the single-engined plane.

Tony Baker ran TB Restaurants, whose offices are based in North Road, Brighton.

He was the first person to open a Tex Mex restaurant in Brighton, followed by the first caf bar.

He owned Dig In The Ribs restaurant, Preston Street, Brighton, and The Dorset Cafe Bar and restaurant on the corner of Gardner Street and North Road, Brighton.

Margaret Parkes, company secretary of TB Restaurants, said: "This has all come as a great shock.

"He was well known in the restaurant trade in the city and a popular person around Brighton.

"He loved flying and he loved life."

His daughter Lauren, 18, who is also a director of the company, had only just started university at Birmingham.

His son Patrick, 16, attends Brighton College. The family lived in Chichester Drive West, Saltdean.

He was divorced from his wife, Sheila.

His partner Elaine Parry, who worked in the recording business, lived in Clifton Terrace, Brighton.

Dig In The Ribs was the first Tex Mex restaurant to open in Brighton in 1982 and it was an instant success, offering Mexican dishes and Texas-sized T-bone steaks.

He insisted it was a Mex Tex restaurant, rather than what has more commonly been known as Tex Mex restaurants.

He later bought the Dorset Arms pub and added the restaurant next door to make it into the popular Dorset Cafe Bar.

Both establishments will continue to be run by the present management team.

Mr Baker's former accountant Bob Ettridge, 66, from Shoreham, said: "He opened the first restaurants of their kind in Brighton.

"He was a great guy who lived life to the full. It is all a great shock.

"He started off flying microlight aircraft and then got his plane which he regularly flew from Shoreham."