13 18 APRIL 2024 FOOD BITES teenage mums, and young mums in general. There’s so much stu out there – about what birth trauma is, about breastfeeding – that just wasn’t there when I had Zach.” Sharing a bedroom with her son, sister and brother, she struggled with postnatal depression, although she also credits that period with developing her organisational skills. “Getting my s*** together definitely came from having Zach,” she says. “Before that, I’d been quite a lazy, laidback teenager. Then suddenly… oh my gosh, it was mental overload. I was 17, I had a baby, I was still at college, I was working in a fish and chip shop to help pay for the college crèche. I had to compartmentalise everything – how much is my train ticket every day? How much are nappies? How much is the milk? I was in this bubble where I thought: ‘I’ve ruined my life, my life is over.’ In fact, it was the beginning of my life, and the biggest push for me to go out and do something with it. Because I had someone who depended on me, and I didn’t want to throw my life down the drain.” The thing she went out and did was audition for The X Factor. “I know lots of people have had di erent experiences on those shows, but honestly, I’ve got nothing but the fondest memories of my time on The X Factor,” she says. “I met so many of my idols. I got to sing alongside George Michael, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey… It was everything I could have dreamed of. I loved every single second of it.” She came third, and although her music career was shortlived, the following year she took a step towards national treasure status by winning I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Afterwards, she received her first hug from her future husband, who’d won the show the previous year. Not that she has any memory of it. “Joe remembers meeting me, but I don’t remember meeting him,” she says. “When I came out, all I wanted to do was see my son. So it was all just a blur. I have no memory of going on the after-show. But Joe remembers. He says I stank. He says I smelled so bad.” The two didn’t get together for another six years (in 2012, Stacey had her second son, Leighton, with then-fiancé Aaron Barnham), eventually marrying in the Pickle Cottage garden in 2022. With a queen and king of the jungle in the house, is it hard to pull rank? “Oh, I dunno,” she laughs. “I think I always pull rank.” Post-jungle, she became a regular TV face, joining the Loose Women panel in 2016, and launching Sort Your Life Out three years ago – around the same time she published her bestselling organisational manual, Tap to Tidy. Because who better to sort other people’s lives out, than someone who’d turned around her own so spectacularly? And she owes it all, she says, to her eldest son. “If I’d not had Zach, I don’t know if I’d have got to this point in my career. I wouldn’t have had that rocket up my a***, saying: ‘You’ve got to go out and do something, otherwise you’re going to spend the rest of your life living on the breadline with a child.’ At the time, I thought my life was over. But retrospectively, it was the beginning of everything.” Stacey Solomon’s Renovation Rescue is on Wednesdays at 9pm on Channel 4 When I take a deep dive into that, I wonder: is it because of my [Jewish] heritage, where my grandparents and great grandparents were always running away, and having to find new places to go? Is it an inherited fear of losing everything? Or is it growing up with very little money, and feeling like, if I throw this away, will I get the opportunity to buy it back?” Stacey was born in Dagenham, Essex, in 1989, the daughter of Flora, a nurse, and David, a photographer of Iraqi-Jewish and Polish-Jewish descent. Her parents divorced – amicably – when she was nine, while early onset puberty left her so uncomfortable with what she’s described as ‘a woman’s body at 10 years old’ that her defence mechanism was to become ‘the funny one’. She was smart – passing 13 GCSEs – but getting pregnant at 17 upended everything. “It was a di erent era – and I know that sounds silly, ‘cos I’m only 34,” she says. “But when I was 17, attitudes were di erent. People still looked at me and went: ‘What a shame you’ve ruined your life.’ That’s genuinely how I was treated. “I remember breastfeeding Zach on the bus, and a woman tutting at me. There’s so much more awareness now of HIGH NOTES (Opposite, clockwise from top left) Stacey on The X Factor; lming Renovation Rescue; on Sort Your Life Out; with Joe Swash and their children Rex, Rose and Belle; on Loose Women with Kaye Adams, Anne Diamond and Nadia Sawalha I thought: “What am I doing?” I’d rather the kids have broccoli with salt and pepper than crisps. Favourite restaurant? We don’t eat out much, but there’s a restaurant near us in Brentwood [Essex] called Alec’s. It’s a little bit posh, but the seafood is so good. I can recommend the garlic pil pil prawns (below). Joe’s the chef, but what’s your speciality? I’m very traditional. I make hearty meals, like a big stew. There’s a thing called mouldy veg stew, which I make with veg that’s about to go o . The kids eat it, though I don’t know what they’ll think when they’re older: “Do you remember, all mum used to make us was that mouldy veg stew?” What are your cupboard essentials? A good stock makes a meal, whatever you’re cooking. And seasoning. For ages, I wouldn’t put seasoning on veg, then
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