Britain’s biggest family: All the shock revelations from the Radfords tell all book revealed, from Noel’s very intimate admission about his vasectomy to Sue’s ‘high sex drive’

Noel and Sue Radford have released their tell-all book today, chalked full of shock revelations about Britain’s biggest family. 

The parents-of-22 shared a behind the scenes look on their busy lives in Morecombe, Lancashire.

The book, published today, addresses concerns over the couple getting together when Sue was 13 and Noel was 18, for the first time.

Among other revelations, Noel describes the bruising he had following his vasectomy as well as  touching on Sue’s ‘high sex drive’.

Elsewhere, they discuss the loss of their still-born child Alfie, how they’ve dealt with fame and just how they finance looking after so many children. 

Inside the Radfords’ finances  

The Radfords doubled down on claims they get no child benefit or money from the state in the new book, but said they ‘certainly aren’t millionaires’ despite recently almost purchasing a £850,000 second home.

They claim their income is solely from their pie shop and media deals, but say they would never give a figure of how much they earn. 

‘We haven’t had child benefit for years, so it’s just not relevant. It’s a minuscule amount, anyway,’ Sue says.

‘We have had people say,”Oh, think of all the money they must be getting” but then when they realise we own our own businesses and are doing well, they say, “Oh, I’m really sorry, I didn’t know. I just jumped to the conclusion you must be on loads of benefits”‘.

‘Some people do have an obsession about the word ‘millionaire’ but we just chuckle when people mention this, because we’re certainly not millionaires,’ Noel added.

Sue added: ‘We are very lucky to have launched a second business. People don’t realise that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, the Channel 5 series, brand deals and all of that, is a second income for us, we see it as our media business. 

‘But, yes, there’s the bakery, the TV show, and then we get sponsorships – they’re generally from Instagram. And there will be adverts from Facebook, which is similar to what happens on YouTube’.

‘People have said we have commercial links with Disney, but we don’t do anything with Disney.

‘We’ve done brand deals with Amazon and we did one with EE.

The couple, who were both adopted as children, decided they didn’t want their baby to get adopted and were determined to raise him themselves 

‘The pie company is very successful, but so is the media business. As much as we love it, we don’t do it just for fun, it’s business at the end of the day and we are very fortunate to make a nice income from our digital content and TV series.’

Noel added: ‘Companies will get in touch with us and if they have a product they’re trying to sell, they’ll give us a brief and tell us how they want us to show it off to our audience. 

‘If we genuinely like the product and think we can deliver what they’re asking for then we’ll agree to make some content featuring it, shoot it to their brief and we post it on our social media channels for the audience to learn more about the product,’.

The couple – who are parents to the UK’s ‘biggest family’ with 22 children – had then invested in a location on the high street in bustling Kendal, in Cumbria, to expand their pie shop business. Pictured last month

Noel also opens up about nearly losing their pie businesses in the early 2000s when Cumbria’s tourism was knocked out by the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, which saw them lose £45,000.

This meant they cut their loses and left Cumbria, moving to Heysham, in 2004 they moved to the 10-bed carehome where they currently reside.

On a recent episode of 22 Kids and Counting, Noel and Sue said they were forced to kick five of their children out after relocating to the countryside because ‘celebrity hunters’ kept turning up at their house.

But the book reveals the sale didn’t go through, with them still in Morecambe. 

Amazingly, they said when they were first approached by a production company they had ‘no interest’ on going on TV.   

On their lavish holidays and affording to treat their kids

She added that people criticising them for going on holiday ‘boils down to jealousy’.

‘I have the mindset now – particularly since I lost my dad – that if you can afford to go on holiday, then go. 

‘Life is definitely too short to say, “Oh, maybe I should squirrel my money away in the bank or whatever”. 

‘Life is too short, so just do it. If we can afford to take our kids to Florida, then we’ll take our kids to Florida. I’m not going to bother myself about what other people say. ‘

Noel added: ‘It’s like you are not allowed to do things unless you have permission from the internet trolls. 

‘And it’s as if people think we deserve to be kept in our place – that because we weren’t born into wealth, and because we are ordinary people from an ordinary town in the North West of England, we should just be happy going to Benidorm’.

For birthdays, none of the siblings get each other gifts, with Noel and Sue spending £150 per child on each birthday.

The children write their letter to Father Christmas in October, so Sue has plenty of time to prep, she ends up getting through ’70 rolls’ of wrapping paper.

Noel buys a six kilogram turkey from the butcher, and then everything else in a ‘big Christmas shop, including a 3.5 kilogram piece of gammon and a piece of beef.

After Christmas, they have a ‘no-spend January’, which helps because there are no family  birthdays in January or February. 

Sue added that the weekly shop costs around £450. 

On their sex life… and comparisons to Tom Cruise and Demi Moore

The father of Britain’s biggest family Noel Radford has defended getting his now wife Sue pregnant when he was 17 and she was 13, saying they were ‘both kids in the eyes of the law’. The couple are pictured getting married when Sue was 17 and Noel was 21 

While Sue says she still ‘really fancies’ Noel she ‘prefers sleep to sex now’ but ‘obviously’ having more children didn’t effect her sex drive.

‘There’s been no frustration,’  said Noel. 

‘I think when you get a bit older, you definitely appreciate your sleep a bit more,’ Sue said.

‘There’s also Heidie, our youngest, to consider as well. She is a real mummy’s girl and never leaves Sue alone,’ Noel added.

‘I still really fancy Noel – he’s still got it! And it’s not just one thing I fancy or love about him – it’s the whole package, I could never imagine ever being with anyone else. In fact, I think we’re more in love now than when we first got together,’ Sue added.

‘I see a bit of Tom Cruise in Noel – although one of the kids did say they saw a bit of Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) from EastEnders! Noel’s also been compared to Steven Gerrard – but no, I just see Tom Cruise!’ she went on.  

‘I’m pleased to say he’s very much a man for romantic gestures. He’ll come home from work with a bunch of flowers, or a box of chocolates. He’s always been romantic. 

Noel, it seems, feels the same about Sue.

‘I do quite often sit there and look at Sue, when she doesn’t know I’m looking at her, and think to myself,”What a great-looking woman she is?”‘.

‘Somebody said to us when we were on our honeymoon that Sue reminded them of Demi Moore – I totally agreed, and Sue loved the comparison, too. I’d still go along with that, and still think we’re on our honeymoon!

‘Sue is the whole package for me but if I did have to pick one part of her – she does have lovely legs.

‘They’re not very long legs, but they’re lovely! She’s always had really good legs – when she was younger, she was a swimmer and a gymnast,’ he added.

Noel’s graphic details about his vasectomy and reversal 

Noel also says that having a vasectomy was the ‘worst thing he ever did’. 

When he was 32, and Sue was pregnant with her ninth child, people started to make comments about Noel ‘getting the snip’.

Sue, at the time, was struggling with post-natal depression, which she said ‘contributed to the decision’.

‘I don’t think any man who has had the snip will forget the procedure – not least because you’re awake when it happens,’ Noel writes.

‘It was all pretty quick, maybe 20 minutes or less, and pretty straightforward – they just said you might feel a bit of tugging and movement, and that was it. I don’t recall any problems afterwards – I wasn’t walking like John Wayne or anything.

‘And there wasn’t any pain. Sue drove me home very soon after the vasectomy, and the regrets about having it done were there immediately – straight after coming out of the hospital’.

Within two days they decided to save up for the reversal, which cost £1,300 to have done privately.

After the reversal Noel says he was covered in bruises.

‘It was literally all black. I have never seen anything like it,’ Sue said. 

‘The whole of it, the veg as well as the meat,’ Noel added, ‘I remember looking at it thinking, is this ever going to get better?’.

Sue Radford took to Instagram to reveal herself and her husband Noel have written their first book

How the Radfords nearly lost everything and got divorced

‘There were days when I’d think: “that’s it, I’m leaving the business and Noel, I just can’t do it anymore”,’ she revealed. 

Sue revealed that she considered leaving her husband Noel after facing difficulties with their business in the 2000s.

The couple – who are parents to the UK’s ‘biggest family’ with 22 children – had then invested in a location on the high street in bustling Kendal, in Cumbria, to expand their pie shop business.

But an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease – thought to have cost the UK economy £8 billion overall – hit the country and left the pair devastated.

Sue admitted that she struggled to see how their ‘marriage would survive’.

‘There were days when I’d think: “that’s it, I’m leaving the business and Noel, I just can’t do it anymore”,’ she revealed.

‘But our marriage has always been strong – and having the kids kept us right. We stuck together and got through it. It was sink or swim and we chose to swim.’

How the mourn their stillborn son Alfie 

Sue says she had 21 ‘easy pregnancies and one difficult one, which lead the birth of stillborn Alfie.’

She says that as soon as she fell pregnant, deep down, she always knew we were never going to take him home.

‘I just knew. It was so odd, because I’d never felt like that during any of my other pregnancies.

‘But with Alfie, I somehow knew I wasn’t going to take him home. Then, probably about three days prior to losing him, I just felt like he was slipping away because his movements were slowing down.

‘It began with my instincts and then, towards the end, it was little physical things I could feel – and I just knew that something really wasn’t right. 

‘I had scans all the way through and, according to them, everything was totally fine. All the people we saw in the hospital thought everything was going to be OK.’

Sue added that ‘from the moment we lost him, we wanted Alfie’s name to always be talked about. 

‘Obviously, the children born before Alfie were affected in different ways initially because they were different ages – some were so young they didn’t understand what had happened. And of course, the ones who came after Alfie had to find out from us what had happened to their brother.’

Sue still celebrates Alfie’s birthday every year.  

‘We visit his grave frequently as a family and that has always been really important for me and Noel. 

‘The children have never forgotten about Alfie – he has always been a part of the family, and the children who have come along after Alfie all know about him.

‘For me, the build-up to Alfie’s birthday is always really, really hard. The actual day itself is not quite as bad – it somehow seems more peaceful. 

‘My mood is a lot lower about a week or so before the day. I was in a foul mood before Alfie’s last birthday – and I knew exactly why I was. 

‘I suppose people just deal with it differently, because I know it’s the actual day that is the worst time for Noel’.

The family are pictured at Christmas – Sue has 22 children and 10 grandchildren

She added: ‘We always go to Alfie’s grave on his birthday, take flowers and just sit with him for a while. Sometimes, we’ve let balloons off as well. 

‘We will sit and talk to him. For Alfie’s last birthday, the kids took a fruit yoghurt and a chocolate bar up for him, bless them.

‘Alfie is right on top of a hill, and he can look right over and see Williamson Park in Lancaster. 

‘It’s such a beautiful spot. As soon as we saw it, we knew that was the place we wanted him to be.

‘It’s really strange but when you’re planning your child’s funeral, you just don’t think about things like that at first. 

‘But we were really fussy about where we wanted him to be, and we were so grateful that the funeral directors suggested the place that we decided on. It’s perfect.’

‘Me, Noel and all the family think about Alfie all the time. When I think about him, I imagine him running around in heaven with my dad, and I imagine him having blond hair, like Casper, because his hair was blond when he was born.

On Noel getting Sue pregnant at 13…

The father-of-22 added that he ‘isn’t bothered’ by comments saying he should have been arrested, but that the negative comments ‘really effect the kids’. 

‘What happened back then has obviously been brought up again in recent years, after we became known by going on television,’ Noel says.

‘People have inevitably talked about the situation and it has been written about in the newspapers and discussed on social media. 

‘There has been a lot of focus on it and, in a way, it was probably worse for us than when it actually happened. So many people have given their opinions.’

‘But we were both kids it was not as if I was 10 or 15 years older than Sue. 

‘For a lot of people, though, things are just black and white and you are tarnished with the same brush as other people in totally different situations.

‘We were young and we were daft. But we wanted to continue as a couple’.

Noel added that, despite him being over the age of consent and Sue below it, he ‘wasn’t in any bother with any of the authorities’ because back then it was ‘all down to your mums and dads and what they thought’.

‘There was no knock on the door saying I was in big trouble,’ he said. 

‘I think someone, somewhere may have had to report it, the doctor maybe,  but there weren’t any repercussions.’

The pair raised eyebrows when it came to light on their TV show that Sue had just turned 14 when she had her first child, while Noel was 18 and a half. 

‘Some of the comments from people were brutal – that I should have been arrested and things like that. 

‘Even though I was just 17 – still a kid, including in the eyes of the law. 

‘But it doesn’t bother me. People will say what they like. I don’t care what they say 

Sue, now 48, added that the bad comment ‘effect the kids’, particularly their eldest son Chris.

‘When people talk today about me and Noel and what happened all those years ago, it now affects Chris as well – it’s not just about us anymore. 

‘We were being dragged back to it, but for Chris it was the first time he had to face people talking about it.,’ Sue added.

‘Noel, like me, was still in education at the time,’ she went on. 

In the book, the couple also reveal that they met because Noel was friends with Sue’s older brother, first meeting when Noel was 11 and Sue was seven.

They had their first kiss in August 1988 after a first date ‘hanging around in Kendal’, Sue fell pregnant in September.

‘I was just 13 and couldn’t believe it,’ Sue said.

‘For both of us, it was just “Oh s***”,’ Noel added.

The couple, who were both adopted as children, decided they didn’t want their baby to get adopted and were determined to raise him themselves.

Noel dropped out of catering college to get a job in a supermarket, while Sue started home schooling for a few months, before returning to school at the start of Year 10 and doing her GCSEs.

A year later, in 1992, the pair got married. Sue’s father had to get special permission from the vicar.

On Sue’s postnatal depression

‘I did suffer from postnatal depression, and it was quite bad. I think, partly, that was to do with Noel having had his vasectomy during that pregnancy. My postnatal depression lasted about six months.

‘i just felt so rubbish. I had to be on antidepressants for the whole six months – but after the six months, that was it, I was fine. 

‘I think a lot of women get postnatal depression, but maybe it’s something that’s not talked about enough. I was fortunate, I think, because the antidepressants were really good. 

‘They got me through those six months – in fact, I would say even after just a few days of taking them, they started to work and have a positive effect.