Sophie Ellis-Bextor shares ‘harsh’ reason her kids are getting bullied at school

Sophie Ellis-Bextor has shared that her children are having a difficult time at school because they have ginger hair.

The 46-year-old has five boys, aged 19, 14, 11, seven, and four, with her husband Richard Jones. The couple first met when Jones auditioned to be in Ellis-Bextor’s tour band in 2002, and have been married since 2005.

The “Murder on the Dancefloor” singer says that their kids have struggled to blend in at school because they’ve inherited her husband’s red hair.

“[Bullying is] definitely been something they've experienced, which is really harsh,” she said on the Salon Confidential podcast.

“You get to secondary school and anything that marks you out becomes the thing you will be teased about. It's extraordinary how you have this desire at that age group just to blend in, to be part of the pack. It's a really strong instinct.”

She said that she had made an effort to ensure that the experience did not impact their confidence by continuing to have conversations about it.

“But rather than letting it make you feel down, hopefully by having conversations, you can actually keep an eye on it and keep it on the right side of things,” she explained.

“And then you get a bit older and you're like ‘Actually, all those things about me that set me apart are the things I'll now give space to and invest in and enjoy myself’.”

Ellis-Bextor also highlighted one benefit of her children having brightly-coloured hair: “My kids have got some different shades of red, but it's so gorgeous – and I can always find them so easily in a playground.”

The singer reflected on motherhood in an interview with The Independent in 2023. Her first pregnancy had been fraught, as she suffered from preeclampsia, a condition that Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and Kim Kardashian have also experienced.

“There was just a lot of drama going on in the middle of it all,” she said at the time. “And my sister was born 10 weeks early when I was 11, so I’d already seen a happy ending, so I wasn’t too – I was probably quite naïve – but I wasn’t too worried about Sonny.

“It sounds absurd, I mean, when I look back and I see pictures, I’m like, oh my God, he was covered in wires, but I just didn’t really see it at the time. I just couldn’t believe that this baby was here.”