Joe Swash has admitted to feeling 'guilt' over his happy family life with new wife Stacey Solomon. The couple tied the knot over the summer in an intimate Jewish ceremony in the garden of their gorgeous home, affectionately dubbed Pickle Cottage.
Stacey and Joe said 'I Do' 19 months after getting engaged during a romantic winter walk on Christmas Eve 2020. The showbiz couple were meant to tie the knot last year, but the wedding was postponed due to the pandemic. Following the delay, Stacey fell pregnant with their first daughter, Rose - who was born on the Loose Women presenter's 32nd birthday last year and recently celebrated turning one.
Joe, 40, and Stacey, 33 met when the former X Factor star was crowned 'Queen of the Jungle' in 2010's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. Joe, who had won the ITV reality series in 2008, was on presenting duties alongside hosts Ant and Dec. They then began working together on the I’m A Celeb ITV2 spin-off but it wasn't until 2016 that they went 'official' with their romance.
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And in 2019, the couple welcomed their first child together. But the family-of-four are actually a blended family of seven as Stacey is also mum to two older sons, Zachary and Leighton, from previous relationships, while former EastEnders star Joe is also dad to teenage son Harry. And in a new interview Joe, who is known for playing Mickey Miller in BBC One soap EastEnders, has opened up about his family life, admitting he feels ‘guilty’ over how happy he is right now.
He told The Sun's Fabulous: "I actually feel guilty about how happy I am with life, my family and Stacey. There have been years when I had a lot of grief and went through a long depression, and I’d sort of given up on ever having a family and all this love." Joe was 11, his dad died from the undiagnosed heart condition Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome.
Joe previously said he had to call an ambulance for his dad when he suffered a heart attack. He then suffered more heartache in 2020 when his nan passed away. Joe also faced an upsetting three-year custody battle over his now-teenage son and found himself hiding away including avoiding phone calls from family.
But Joe believes his wife Stacey was ‘an angel’ sent to him by his dad to ‘bring me out of real darkness in my life. He added to Fabulous: "If I hadn’t met her, everything would have been very different. I don’t know what would have happened to me."
Joe, however, was able to have a giggle about the 'mortifying' start for the now-married couple whose relationship didn't turn romantic until six years after they first met. "And then it all went horribly wrong..." Joe revealed. "I invited her to my [hotel] room and when I opened the door I just kissed her. She didn’t kiss me back. It was totally mortifying."
But it must have worked. There is, however, one thing that Joe appears to be bad at and that's telling his wife what he is up to work-wise. Speaking on the Parenting Hell podcast with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdecombe, Stacey said: "He has a cookbook out. He's so funny because he doesn't tell me anything and then he'll post on Instagram, 'I've got a cookbook out'."
"I'm like, "Babe, you could have told me?" And he's like, "Oh, yeah"." Joe has created recipes that are perfect for "meals for a happy family" after making it to the finals of Celebrity MasterChef last year in which he lost out on the title to Kadeena Cox.
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