INTERVIEW
Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Roger Hawes and Janey Smith, who struck up a romance in front of the nation on ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad, talk about later-life relationships
A TV reality show is the last place anyone would expect to find true love, but that’s exactly what happened to single parents Roger Hawes and Janey Smith – much to their surprise.
The couple took part in the hit ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad, which was billed as a ‘Love Island for middle-aged single parents’ when it aired last September. Like the show’s ten other participants, Roger and Janey were nominated by their adult children, who were secretly watching their parents’ every move.
Viewers were enchanted by the participants – mostly in their fifties – with their humour, vulnerabilities and complex back stories. In particular, the nation fell for unassuming Roger, a funny 58-year-old postman from Chesterfield. Widowed just 14 months before shooting began, he started the show seemingly overwhelmed and fragile. And then, on day two, 47-year-old Janey entered the house – and the hint of a twinkle returned to his eye. Over the next nine days, their love blossomed.
On a wild winter’s morning at a seafront bar in Hove, East Sussex, the rain is hammering down – a far cry from the summer idyll when the show was filmed last May – but indoors all is sunshine. Roger and Janey are the only pair from the series still together, and the portents are good. Watching them teasing one another and laughing (there is much giggling) leaves little room for doubt they are mutually besotted. It all seems a long way from their first, uncertain steps in the process.
Roger wasn’t even sure he wanted to do the show, hosted by Davina McCall, when daughter Jess, 28, nominated him. He had been married to wife Jo for 30 years before she died from a malignant melanoma that spread to her brain. By his own admission, he’d been through hell.
‘I don’t know how I got through the first three or four months [after Jo died],’ he explains. ‘I was totally lost and fully aware that the kids missed their mum. I struggled to fill that void. If I didn’t have my kids, I don’t know what I would have done. My kids, my sister and brother and close family basically got me through it.’
Not everyone was convinced he was ready for the show. His mother and sister told him not to do it, while his brother and kids (Jess, daughter Alex, 26, and son Ben, 22) urged him to take the plunge. It was a lesson learned from Jo’s death that tipped the balance. ‘I know now that life is short and you need to make the most of it.’
