Leave it all on the stage
The first two times Vogue Williams and Spencer Matthews met it was in a lift. The first time, they were in Ibiza, several years before they became a couple. “I was with my girlfriend at the time,” Spencer says, and Vogue laughs. “We were having an argument,” he continues, “and Vogue was in the lift.” “I was pissed,” Vogue interjects before adding cheerily, “I actually really liked his girlfriend, she was really nice to me in the lift. I thought, ‘That’s a nice girl’. Spenny was not so happy in the lift.”
The second lift was at a training camp in advance of appearing on The Jump ,a Channel 4 winter sports reality show Spencer won in 2017. They were aware of each other beforehand. Spencer, upon hearing Vogue was taking part in the show, had messaged her to say they should “Go for a drink or something.”
“That never materialised,” he says, adding “she was very quick to answer.” What did she say?
“No,” Vogue says quickly and firmly, smiling.
“You answered me straight away, so I don’t know why you’re pretending to be cool,” her husband replies with a grin.
“I’m not pretending to be cool. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t have been going for a drink, for sure.”
Vogue was aware of Spencer because of Made in Chelsea, the reality TV show he appeared in for 10 seasons starting in 2011.
“I mean, I hadn’t watched lots of Made in Chelsea. I’d watched the odd episode, and had put out a couple of tweets,” she breaks off laughing. “Like, slagging Spenny off... being an asshole. I’d forgotten about it.”
Spencer breaks in, saying drily, “for the purpose of this interview it’s fine to say that Vogue was a fan.”
Vogue replies: “The tweets would suggest otherwise. From my brief encounter with his character on Made in Chelsea ,I thought, ‘Not for me.’”
Her husband describes arriving at the camp in Hemel Hempstead.
“I was still drinking very heavily at the time. Hadn’t slept, I don’t believe,” he says. They go back and forth laughing over the outfit he was wearing – tracksuit bottoms, his father’s slippers, a gilet and a flat cap.
“Impeccable face,” Spencer finishes with
We’ve really learned to just let things wash over us, because there’s some things that you just can’t control. We try not to get involved in the bullshit as well
love our families,” Spencer, whose older brother James is married to Pippa Middleton, says of his and Vogue’s similarities.
“We’re both very ambitious. Both work pretty hard. And we both really value humour. I was about to say we don’t take ourselves too seriously. I take myself quite seriously. I do,” he says firmly, agreeing that this is something that has been more noticeable since he gave up alcohol in 2018. He went on to launch the non-alcoholic spirits brand CleanCo.
“I think you’re trying to shake the Made in Chelsea stuff as well, which I would find quite frustrating,” Vogue says. “Imagine if people still kept calling me ‘Vogue from Fade Street’. It would get a little thin quite quickly,” she laughs.
“I’ve been trying to shake the Made in Chelsea stuff since the day I left,” says Spencer. “It’s not like an aggressive try and shake it. But it is probably something that I hear on a daily basis, stuff about that show. It would be the same as me asking you about your first ever journalism [jobs]. It’s probably just incredibly boring to you as it is to me.”
In fact, they grew up together, Vogue explains, referring to her being 31 when they met.
“I should’ve probably been more grown up by then,” she laughs. “But you change so much in your 30s. Your 20s are wild. You’re just like, do whatever you want. Get away with it. Doesn’t matter. Whereas in your 30s, you’re more settled. And getting married, having a family together, all of that completely changes a person.
“And I think we grew quite nicely together with that and having kids. And we both have the same kind of feelings towards how we want our kids brought up. Like everybody, you just want to be happy. You want to make sure your kids are happy.”
I wonder what it’s like to have a partner who’s in the public eye, with the online mauling that can go with that.
“I think we’re very good at minding each other,” Vogue says. “But I also think outside of the industry we work in, we’re navigating life as a family – we’ve got three young kids and that’s what ultimately is more important than anything to us. We’ve really learned to just let things wash over us, because there’s some things that you can’t control. We try not to get involved in the bullshit as well. Once we know that everything is cool between us, everything is good with our family and our kids, that’s all that really matters.”
You learn to navigate life better as you get older, Spencer adds, seeking out the things that matter. “You can become a little bit more selective with the work that you do, and you can choose to spend your time in different ways. And as long as your children, as an example, are loved and cared for in the way that you need them to be or they deserve to be, then you’re doing a very good job, in my opinion.”
When they fight, are they shouters or sulkers? “I don’t think we’re shouters. I’m not a shouter in general,” says Vogue. “I’ve had shouting arguments with my sister. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had the odd shouting argument. But I think, again, as you get older, shouting arguments are less common. I would find that very stressful to have a shouting argument with any of my friends or Spenny. I think I’m more of an ignorer. So I will happily ignore until the cows come home. Spenny is more of a wants-to-sort-it-out.”
Spencer smiles. “Vogue is what they call hyper stubborn and fails to admit any kind of wrongdoing ever,” he says.
“I would if there was any wrongdoing,” she counters.
“I do feel quite lucky with us,” he continues, earnestly, “because when you don’t really know how to navigate someone and you don’t really know how their mind works, it’s quite complicated sometimes to argue with that person.
“By the way, I believe that all arguing is basically a waste of time and misspent energy. I think through good communication, you can avoid all arguments with anyone. Particularly the person that you love. Arguments in our case typically stem from a lack of communication. Right? Holding something in, letting it bubble up. And all of a sudden what seems a small problem to one of you is a massive problem to the other because it’s been brewing for days instead of minutes.
“So that’s probably our main problem, that if there is some discomfort in the relationship, we’re not great at just sitting down and tackling it. We’ll let it bubble up a bit and it will become a big...” he trails off.
Spencer proudly shows us the ice bath on their terrace. He’ll be taking one after we speak, and there’s a winding anecdote about how it’s the tool that helps sharpen his mind, during which Vogue picks up her phone to check it. He laughingly calls her out, then informs me somewhat crossly that the ice bath, and health and wellness, are not bandwagon trends.
Earlier this year Spencer appeared on an episode of Vogue’s podcast for Boots, Taboo Talk, which covered the topic of sober curiosity. In it he described how he almost lost her before he gave up drinking alcohol, and also how encouraging Vogue was during that tricky period.
“I think that time was definitely difficult,” Vogue says now. “I’d say I’m surrounded quite a lot by heavy drinkers. I always have been. My dad was quite a heavy drinker. And I just knew that Spencer wasn’t being the best version of himself. It wasn’t actually that difficult to navigate. I think there were definitely arguments around that time. It was quite frustrating. He had to figure it out for himself – you can’t tell somebody else they need to drink less.
“And then once he did drink less, I think he realised his potential and was like, ‘Jesus, how much time was wasted doing nothing?’ I think that it was just part of his growing up. And I think we navigated that part of our relationship quite well.”
Spencer also mentions his recent diagnosis of ADHD.
“I couldn’t care less though, to be honest. It’s not made any difference to my life. It kind of explains why I was a certain way at school, that’s about it. Please don’t focus on the ADHD thing. I can’t bear it when people use ADHD as some kind of excuse. It really irritates me. I have ADHD and it’s like, for me, it’s kind of a superpower. If I need to focus deeply on something that I care about, I can. I’m not sidetracked by anything in that period. But other than that, if I’m not interested in something, my mind will just wander into things that I am interested in. So I love it,” he says.
I wonder how they strike a balance, living and working together.
“I think that’s something I’ve learned from previous relationships,” Vogue says. “I think it’s really important to keep your own friendships and Spenny and I, we spend a good bit of time together because we work together. Obviously, we live together. But we do have very separate lives in our work lives as well.”
She describes a recent day, when her friend and podcast co-host, comedian Joanne McNally, arrived for a planned walk.
“And he was like, ‘Oh, well, I really quite feel like doing a power walk today’. And I said, ‘You can’t come’. It’s nice to have separate time as well, because we do spend a lot of time together.”
She describes how she has friends who feel like family, while her brother lives with them in London and her sister lives in their Dublin home.
Says Spencer: “I have two friends that I think are important, and they know who they are.”
The pair put to bed the rumours that
I just knew that Spencer wasn’t being the best version of himself. It was quite frustrating. He had to figure it out for himself. You can’t tell someone else to drink less