Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash prove their marriage isn’t perfect on their new reality show when Joe leaves Stacey holding the babies at an important business meeting.
Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash prove their marriage isn’t perfect on their new reality show when Joe leaves Stacey holding the babies at an important business meeting. Stacey is devastated on the show when husband Joe returns home from a fishing trip, five hours late leaving her trying to conduct a business meeting about her new perfume launch at the same time as caring for their young children.
The new BBC show, titled Stacey And Joe , will feature the couple at their enormous Tudor-style Essex home, which they call Pickle Cottage, with their children Zachary, 17, Leighton, 12, Rex, five, Rose, three, and Belle, two, plus their dogs Peanut and Teddy. There’s even cameo appearances from their four ducks and two cats! On the show, viewers will see that Stacey is frustrated and humiliated by Joe’s actions after he promised not to be late. Despite being five hours late, he eventually arrives saying, ‘There was an accident on the road… otherwise I would have been her 20 minutes earlier.”
Unimpressed, Stacey responds: “You’re five hours late.” She adds: “Sometimes I don’t think Joe realises the repercussions. It’s all a laugh and a joke but that meeting was really important to me.”
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Eventually Joe turns up but the damage is done. A lot of celebrities would have cut the awkward moment, but Joe acknowledges that it’s important to show their lows. He told The Mirror: “So many people represent their lives as being so perfect on Instagram. It’s our responsibility to show the real – the highs and the lows. It’s not all a bed of roses. Sometimes we argue.”
Filming arguments could add pressure to their relationship, but Joe and Stacey have found being able to watch the footage back has helped the them see each other’s point of view more easily. Stacey said: “You might go to see somebody and talk through your relationship and they might give you advice, but you never get to witness when you’re bickering between each other. We found that really interesting. There’s definitely things in our communication where we’re like, ‘Wow, we could do that better. And we could talk about this more..’ It opens you up to the development of your relationship that you don’t always see, in everyday life, because a lot of the time you’re just trudging through to get to the next day.”
Since filming the show, Stacey has tried to change. She said: “I am trying to pick my battles. Sometimes I will watch myself and go, ‘Oh, gosh, you didn’t really need to pick up on that.’ There’s bigger issues.”
Joe has had a similar experience. He said: “Sometimes I need to sit back, I need to listen instead of being so defensive. The main thing I’ve learned is that I’ve just got the most amazing family and most amazing kids. They’re our little legacies.”
The pair first met when Stacey won on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2010 and Joe was presenting a spin-off show for ITV2. They immediately felt a connection but they didn’t start dating until 2016 and they married in 2022. Now the pair feel like they were always destined to be together.
Joe said: “I feel like the universe kept us away from each other until we were at certain parts of our lives. We’ve had other relationships and stuff like that so I feel like it kept us away until we were ready to meet each other.”
For Stacey, as soon as they started dating, everything fell into place. Stacey said: “I remember when we first got together and even some of our family were like, ‘Of course, that makes perfect sense!’”
Joe said: “I remember someone saying in the pub, ‘I thought you two were together already!’” For both of them, despite their bickering, they’ve never been happier. Stacey said: “As soon as we were spending time together we were both like ‘this is so easy’ and we hadn’t had a relationship that was easy before.”
Watching their reality show back, Stacey has realised how proud she is of her family. She said: “We do love each other and we do have an incredible family and it gets intense. It’s our stress era!” Now their youngest daughter Belle is at nursery, things are getting slightly quieter at Pickle Cottage. Too quiet for Joe. He said: “I’d love to have just one more.”
However, Stacey, who has five children all together but gave birth to her youngest three children in just five years, is considerably less keen. She said: “Joe would like me to be a baby machine! I quit! I quit. My pelvic floor is a shambles, the whole of my back is screaming at me. I can’t do it again.”
Stacey & Joe airs Tuesday 1 April , 8pm, BBC One. Join The Mirror’s WhatsApp Community or follow us on Google News , Flipboard , Apple News, TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads – or visit The Mirror homepage.
