Sue Radford reveals the price of weekly groceries for 22 children and family with past debts
MUM of 22 Sue Radford has revealed the eye-watering amount she pays for a weekly food shop to feed Britain’s ‘largest family’.
The 22 Kids and Counting star revealed all in her new book, The Radfords: Making Life Count, in which she also opens up about her family’s past debts.
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Together with husband Noel, the couple spent a whopping sixteen and a half years while Sue was pregnant.
But thanks to their Channel 5 show, successful bakery and social media channels, the family has been able to function relatively smoothly.
However, that doesn’t soften the blow of an all-powerful grocery store every week, and it’s not helped by the fact that none of the kids are picky eaters.
As a result, Sue claims her weekly supermarket bill is around £450.
That works out to around £1,800 a month and £21,600 a year on groceries alone.
“We don’t claim any benefits, the cake business is very successful and so is our media business,” Sue said. “We work hard, but we’re not millionaires!”
“However, the trouble is disturbing. We just want to be able to give our children the best life possible.”
But things didn’t always go so smoothly, as Sue revealed she was considering leaving Noel after problems with their business in the 2000s.
Sue and Noel’s love life began 35 years ago in Kendal, Lake District, Cumbria, when they were just teenagers.
After they married in 1992, they invested in a site on Kendal’s high street to expand their cake shop business in Heysham, Lancashire.
The couple had taken out a ‘huge’ loan to invest in their blossoming dream, which started off perfectly.
“For starters, it did really well,” Noel explained. “It did well.”
But an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain devastated their business plans, leaving the couple devastated.
“It’s just killed tourism,” Noel added, as the family plunged into despair.
“If there was anything that would have caused us to divorce, it would have been this.”
Ultimately, Sue struggled to see how their “marriage would survive.”
“There were days when I thought, ‘that’s it, I’m leaving the business and Noel, I just can’t do it anymore’,” she revealed to the Mirror.
“I can’t even describe it, it just caused so much stress. You went to bed thinking about the debt, you woke up thinking about the debt, you woke up at night thinking about the debt…
“But our marriage has always been strong – and having the kids has kept us on track. We stuck together and got through it. It was sink or swim and we chose to swim.”
Now they have a large family including Chris, 34, Sophie, 29, Chloe, 28, Jack, 26, Daniel, 24, Luke, 22, Millie, 22, Katie, 20, James, 19, Ellie, 18, Aimee, 17, Josh, 16, Max, 14, Tillie, 13, Oscar, 11, Casper, 10, Hallie, eight, Phoebe, seven, Archie, six, Bonnie, four, and Heidie, three.
Sadly, they also lost a son, Alfie, who was stillborn in 2014.
But Sue isn’t done yet.
Despite having the largest family in Britain, the Lancashire mum shares her desire for more children.
Now that her eldest children have left home, Sue has opened up about the prospect of raising or adopting more children to fill the gap.
The mother-of-22 also revealed how the family actually fits into their £40,000 luxury camper van for family trips.
The family from Morecambe regularly pack into the camper for weekend breaks or during the school holidays – and Sue told how her children fit under one roof.