Rock star Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, were today ordered to pay their former chef Jane Martin £24,944 in compensation after she won a claim for sexual discrimination against them.

Miss Martin won her case against the couple at an employment tribunal in Southampton after she claimed she was sacked by Miss Styler from their estate in Wiltshire because she became pregnant.

But the Lake House Estate, which was the named party in the case, has already won the right to appeal against the ruling and compensation amount.

A spokesman for Ms Styler said: ''The financial award made by the tribunal to Jane Martin is virtually meaningless since the whole case is subject to appeal which was granted in response to our submission that the original hearing displayed bias against Trudie.

''Given the fact of that pending appeal, it is our belief and that of our legal team that the remedies hearing should never have taken place. Hence its findings are entirely academic.

''It remains Trudie's position that she, as a woman and a mother, has never in her life sexually discriminated against anyone and never would do so.'' Miss Martin, 41, was employed by the couple for eight years as a chef on £28,000 a year, cooking for people such as Madonna and Sir Elton John with no expense spared and on a budget of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

On one occasion she had travelled from Wiltshire to London to cook a bowl of pasta for Sting and Styler's children.

But she claimed to the tribunal that things started to go wrong when she became pregnant in 2005. She said Styler was unhappy with her when she took time off work with a stomach bug.