Tanya Bardsley is opening up with Husband Phil, Mum Julie, Dad Steve and children Gabriella, Rocco, Ralphi & Renz as they get ready for their upcoming reality TV show
Tanya and Phil Bardsley have finally agreed to throw open the doors of their stunning home for a new reality series – exactly a decade after they made their debut on The Real Housewives Of Cheshire . The couple, who have been married for 11 years this summer, have spent the last few months filming six hour-long episodes with their family – and are being billed as the UK’s answer to the Kardashians.
As they invite OK! into their stunning six-bedroom home for an exclusive catch-up before the first episode of The Bardlsey Bunch airs on ITVBe, we’re keen to know what they make of the comparisons to the royal family of the reality TV world.
“We’re more like the Clampetts who won the lottery,” Tanya laughs, referring to the somewhat less sophisticated family better known as The Beverly Hillbillies. “We’re just a really normal family who’s… a bit crazy! We get dressed up now and again but the rest of the time we’re a very regular family who live in a messy, chaotic house where everyone argues and everyone makes up.
“I think people want to see that nowadays, too. We’re a bit over watching people make salads and green smoothies. We want actual reality, genuine normal life.”
Discussions about opening up their day-to-day life for a reality show had rumbled on pretty much since Tanya made her debut on The Real Housewives of Cheshire in 2015, alongside the likes of Lauren Simon and fellow WAG Leanne Brown.
At the time, the couple were parents to Gabriella, now 23, from Tanya’s previous relationship, and her and Phil’s three boys Rocco, now 15, and 12-year-old Renz. Their youngest, Ralphi, five, came along midway through series four of RHOC . The biggest obstacle to breaking out on their own, they reveal, was former professional footballer-turned-manager Phil, 39, who admits although he’s always supported Tanya doing it, he’s not a big fan of reality TV – and that includes the Real Housewives !
“Phil has always said no, he never wanted to do it and we’ve always tried to change his mind,” Tanya says. “We think he’s a star, though! His gran, Queen Beryl, always used to say to us, ‘I really want our Phil to go on TV’, so I know she’d be really happy now too.”
Tanya left RHOC as a full-time cast member in 2021, after suffering a breakdown. She was later diagnosed with ADHD. She says it was a life-changing moment for her and one that explained so many of her previous troubles. Her eldest son, aspiring pro footballer Rocco, received his own diagnosis shortly after, and she’s now in a house “where everyone is on the spectrum somewhere”. “I’m really proud my children will grow up feeling differently to how I did, because I want them to feel accepted and proud of who they are,” she tells us. “I feel quite sad for the younger me. She struggled so much and didn’t really understand the world.”
“This world isn’t built for all of us, trying to sit in a classroom in a certain way and learn in a certain way. But Rocco just isn’t bothered by having ADHD at all, and actually he’s quite proud of it now.”
During the interview, there were moments of typical family chaos such as Tanya’s grandma tidying around and the boys and Phil doing push-ups in the hallway.
Later on, Ralphi and Renz were playing football in the living room even though Tanya and Julie told them off multiple times. It’s safe to say the whole household is football-focused, most telling by a football net and about 30 balls strewn around the garden.
Although it doesn’t take away from the super-glam house, which even has a glass floor which looks into a cinema and bar in the basement. In order to capture such moments, The Bardsley Bunch production team installed GoPro cameras throughout the property, placing small microphones in plant pots and on picture frames. The result is a more fly-on-the-wall documentary style and very real.
Aside from a few planned scenes to help explain context or to capture a reaction, the rest is very much “just us living our lives”, Tanya says. “I’m hoping seeing Ralphi dressed in a Grinch outfit and smashing balls off a mirror makes other people feel really happy about their own lives,” she laughs.
Tanya’s mum and dad, Julie and Steve, also appear in the series, as well as her nan Irene (who at 87 is “still doing the splits”, Tanya tells us proudly), and clearly, they weren’t phased by the presence of the cameras. During one scene, Irene pokes fun at her granddaughter’s choice of fluffy coat by calling her Big Bird, which is followed up by a playful jab from her dad about her forgetting her “beak”.
Tanya says, “It’s a bit of escapism TV. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s OK, any negativity will just be water off a duck’s back for me at this point. I don’t let it get to me.”
Fortunately, Phil is on the same page when it comes to being exposed to the potential ire of internet trolls.
“I don’t let anything like that affect me,” he says. “I’m pretty thick-skinned and I just don’t read too much into what other people say, because I think if you let other people’s opinions affect you, you’ll never achieve anything in life.
“That was never my reason for not wanting to do it, it was just more about keeping a balance with work and life. But the peer pressure got to me in the end!”
Tanya and Phil wed at Cheshire’s Peckforton Castle in 2014 so are celebrating their 11th anniversary this summer. They are not “love’s young dream”, Tanya jokes, as they descend into a (semi) playful argument over whether her “menopause” is harder to live with than Phil’s “manopause”.
“We have good days and bad days,” he says, while trying to bat off Tanya’s accusations that he can be a “bit of a Victor Meldrew sometimes”, insisting he’s “not grumpy”.
Tanya interjects at this point, revealing, “Honestly, we’ve probably argued every single day since we met. We argue and we make up. I think a lot of couples will know what I’m talking about, it’s just the way we are.”
Daily bickers are perhaps not a surprise, given the couple have their hands full with their three boys. The two older siblings are following in their dad’s footsteps and are already signed to Stoke City, and Rocco earned himself a club scholarship last year.
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Rocco and Renz were also leaving to play a football tournament straight after our shoot. Tanya and Phil are understandably incredibly proud parents, but it does mean much of their lives are spent ferrying their brood to and from football practices.
Yet, despite the hectic schedule, and now the added commitment of filming a reality series, Tanya is thriving, and it’s in no small part down to her recent year of sobriety. In December 2022 she hit “rock bottom” and checked herself into a rehab centre. Her relationship with alcohol, she admits, had tipped into unhealthy, and unbeknownst to her at the time, early perimenopause symptoms were badly affecting her ADHD. The result was crippling anxiety, mood swings and poor sleep, which in turn led to an overdependence on alcohol.
Just over two years later, Tanya is the healthiest she’s ever been, having sought help privately and spending 12 months off the booze. While she now enjoys the occasional glass of wine or a cocktail, the home bar even comes complete with an extravagant champagne wall, it’s not a “must” for her, and she can take it or leave it. “I had no idea about the relationship between perimenopause and ADHD, and it turned my ADHD up 10-fold,” she says.
“That’s partly why I’ve been so open about my own experience. I’ve seen the very dark places it can take you to, and I know that one in four women with ADHD who attempt suicide will succeed.
“Women shouldn’t have to get to that point. For me, a year off alcohol made such a difference.
“I would recommend it to any woman with ADHD who thinks they’re hitting menopause, because it changes so much. It’s like I’ve had to relearn my body all over again.”
Whatever she’s doing – or not doing – is clearly working. While the days of full glam are few and far between for Tanya, she happily admits she likes to feel good on the outside (when she’s not in her comfy tracksuit leggings and slouchy cardigan, she laughs) as well as feeling good on the inside.
She recently went under the knife for a half-mid facelift and was shocked by what the medics found.
“They were scraping out 20-year-old filler. Afterwards, the surgeon said I couldn’t use anything on my skin apart from water and Bio-Oil, and honestly, my skin was amazing! Then I stupidly introduced all the retinols and things I used to use, and now my skin is awful. I need to go back to basics again.
“That’s what I mean about relearning my body. So many things change as a woman, I think it’s important to notice them.”
Tanya on The Bardsley Bunch is undeniably less glam than The Real Housewives version we’re used to seeing. But it’s hard to focus on your own wardrobe when you’ve got three boys causing clothing – or lack of – havoc by themselves. People will see us all in our scruffs,” she laughs. “Also, my kids are always in their underpants, so I spent most of the time trying to get some more clothes on them all!”
The Bardsley Bunch airs on Wednesday 16 April at 9pm on ITVBe
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