Who is Sophie Ellis Bextor's husband? Inside their 19 year marriage and family life
Sophie Ellis-Bextor is getting ready to dazzle tonight for the New Year's Eve celebrations on BBC One with her NYE Disco where she'll perform her global hits and have some surprise numbers too. Behind the curtain of her glamorous life and impressively, Sophie and her husband, Richard Jones, have one of the most long standing and strongest marriages in the world of showbiz.
After 19 years together and five children later, they’re still more in love than ever. The couple felt ‘instant chemistry’ after meeting and their first child was born just eight months after they met. So who is the man married to the popstar? Let’s take a look.
Sophie's hubby Richard is a musician just like his wife, he's a bass guitarist in The Feeling whose biggest hits include Fill My Little World. The couple met back in 2002 during her tour for album Read My Lips when Sophie was 24 and Richard was 22.
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Speaking about the time, Richard said: “Something kind of smacked us in the face. The chemistry was incredible – it was like nothing I've ever experienced." After just six weeks together, Sophie discovered she was pregnant and the couple decided to keep the baby.
Speaking about the tricky time, the now 42 year old has previously said: “Our relationship was dramatic early on. We found out we were having a baby when we'd only been dating for six weeks," Sophie told the Daily Mail.
Sophie continued to add: “Then I gave birth two months early. So, comically, our baby was born when we'd only been going out for eight months.” Sonny was born in 2004 prematurely, and weighed just 3lb 8oz spending his first five weeks in a premature baby unit.
Sophie’s mum, Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis told her at the time that it might be the “wrong time” but it was the “right baby”. It certainly was and the couple got married in Italy in June 2005 and they have five children, Sonny, 20, Kit, 15, Ray, 12, Jesse, 9, and Mickey, five.
Speaking about being a working mum, Sophie has said that FaceTime has proved a real lifeline for the family. She said: "When I’m on tour, one of the hardest things is being away from the children so FaceTime is brilliant to keep in touch. I can do bedtime with them, brush their teeth with them or read them a bedtime story.
“It just stops them thinking of you as absent and you’re part of their routine. So you haven’t gone away for as long as maybe feel that you have.”
Richard has also enjoyed a successful music career with The Feeling and the band have performed alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran, Nick Mason and Mike Rutherford. The band have achieved four top ten singles and scooped a Brit Award nomination in 2007 for Best Song with Fill My Little World.
Watch Sophie Ellis-Bextor's New Year's Eve Disco at 11.30pm, BBC One.
