Bill Clinton grinned with pride on Tuesday as he accepted an award for Father of the Year, presented by his beaming daughter Chelsea.

The former president looked delighted as his 33-year-old daughter awarded him the statue and hugged him tightly at a New York luncheon to benefit charity Save The Children.

And to top off the achievement, Clinton announced that he even had a text from wife Hillary, which read: ‘Congratulations. I think you deserve this.’

Chelsea, 33, lavished praise on her 66-year-old father, saying that he had ‘set the bar high’ for her husband Marc Mezvinsky whom she married in August 2010.

The former President also gushed about his daughter, now a special correspondent for NBC, saying that she ‘still makes me happier than anything else in the world’.

Hillary Clinton did not attend the event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. The National Father’s Day Council cited Clinton’s philanthropy work through the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, both started after he left the White House in 2001.