'I feel judged': VICKY PATTISON reveals shock reason her sex life with husband Ercan Ramadan has dwindled, his bedroom request... and the problem that saw them visit a sex therapist
Vicky Pattison has an uncanny ability to turn life’s lemons into reality TV lemonade. Eight years ago while filming a documentary about her upcoming nuptials to businessman John Noble, she was forced to cancel her wedding after discovering her fiancé had allegedly cheated on her.
But while many would have crumpled in the face of such public humiliation, Vicky repurposed her wedding documentary as a break-up show instead.
Having grown up on screen from the loud, brash twentysomething of reality show Geordie Shore, to the slightly less loud 38-year-old of today, she says: ‘I think people who follow me have watched me have my heart broken, watched me cry, and didn’t know if I was going to get my happy ever after.’
Two years ago she finally did when she married Ercan Ramadan – a former builder she met on Instagram and who briefly appeared on the series The Only Way Is Essex.
The couple duly celebrated their special day in the series My Big Fat Geordie Wedding. ‘It just felt lovely for everyone to see me actually find that moment with Ercan – that happiness,’ she says. ‘And I think this next chapter is no different.’
The next chapter, naturally enough, is children and in her new two-part E4 series Vicky Pattison: Maybe, Baby? she and Ercan discuss the possibility of starting a family.
She worries that approaching 40 she has to make a decision imminently. ‘My fear is that I’m going to wake up one day and realise that holidays, handbags and lie-ins are not that important,’ she says. ‘I’ll be devastated if I’ve missed my chance to be a mum.’
This is a typical Vicky show – all effervescence and emotion – and while the chemistry between her and Ercan is evident, their initial ambivalence about starting a family is just as obvious.
Vicky says that she has never felt 'desperate to be a mother'
Vicky's latest show charts her and husband Ercan's decision to start a family
‘I’m very career-orientated and ambitious,’ she says. ‘I kept waiting in my twenties for the penny to drop and to think, “Gosh, I really do want to start a family” but that moment never came.’
It was during her twenties that Vicky became a stalwart of reality TV – first rising to fame in the 2011 series Geordie Shore, which followed the lives of a group of extravagantly tanned youngsters in Tyneside, and then appearing in shows such as I’m A Celebrity, where her warmth led to her being crowned Queen of the Jungle in 2015, and last year’s Strictly Come Dancing.
But marrying Ercan in 2024 made her think again. ‘Having that stability and love definitely changed my feelings towards having a family. But there was never a moment where I was like, “I’m desperate to be a mother.” I feel it’s because of that question mark around whether or not we want to have a family that the idea for this show was born.’
At 32, Ercan is six years younger than Vicky and she says that was an issue. ‘When I turned 35 he was in his late 20s and I know how I felt in my late 20s – having children wasn’t on my radar. But even though I knew we should start having these conversations, it didn’t feel like the right time.’
A couple of years ago, therefore, they made the ‘responsible’ decision to freeze her eggs and embryos and in Maybe, Baby? she checks in on them at the London clinic where they’re stored. ‘I wanted to give our relationship a chance without rushing this invisible timeline. But I was also aware of my ticking biological clock.’
Ratcheting up the pressure even more, perhaps, is Ercan’s assertion on the show that if they do decide to become parents, he wants Vicky to carry their child rather than resorting to adoption or surrogacy – options that are explored in the series.
‘I think if you ask the majority of men – and women for that matter – it would be their first choice to have their own child,’ says Vicky. ‘But there’s not an awful lot of information out there about surrogacy and adoption… and a lot of judgment.’
Vicky’s candour has made her a big hit with her 5.5million Instagram followers and she certainly doesn’t pull any punches on the show. At one point she even enlists the help of a sex therapist to discuss the couple’s dwindling love life over the past eight years. ‘People assume I’m quite wild, that I’m swinging from the chandeliers every night. But I’m very boring. I’m actually a bit of a prude.’
She admits the couple are having less action now, and says she doesn’t like having sex when their two dogs are in the house, for the slightly improbable reason that she worries they’ll know what she’s getting up to.
‘And does that matter?’ asks the therapist. ‘It does to me,’ says Vicky. ‘I feel judged by my labradors!’ When the therapist asks what they would like to happen in terms of their sexual dynamic, Ercan responds, ‘Just up the numbers, really.’ Vicky gives him a look. ‘You’re so romantic,’ she replies.
The dynamic of the couple’s relationship is, she says, a very progressive one. ‘I am the breadwinner in the traditional sense and Erc is more of the caregiver.’ The couple even signed a prenup before getting hitched. Thus while Vicky makes numerous TV appearances (she’s on our screens again this month for The Great Celebrity Bake Off), Ercan runs his online menswear business from home.
Vicky will be on our screens again this month for The Great Celebrity Bake Off
So if the couple do decide to have children, have they considered the possibility of Ercan staying at home? ‘Well, you see how that plays out on the show,’ she says. ‘Coming from a very traditional Turkish-Cypriot background as he does, I’m very proud of how he’s adapted to our lifestyle when it’s not what a lot of his family and friends would expect.’
He is though, ‘a progressive man, and you’d have to be to be married to me’, she grins. ‘I’m definitely a lot for a lot of men. I think I would emasculate quite a lot of people, but our dynamic really works for us.’
Vicky Pattison: Maybe, Baby?, Tue, 9pm; Wed, 9.10pm, E4.
