Inside The Radfords Christmas – from £400 food shop to hundreds of presents including £268 posh perfume for Sue
CHRISTMAS is a busy time no matter how you celebrate, but Britain’s biggest family might take the cake for the most chaotic one.
The Radfords have 22 kids, which unsurprisingly makes planning for the big day a pretty expensive operation.
Mum Sue is known to go all-out for her bumper brood, reportedly forking out over £7,000 on gifts every year.
Then there’s the £400 she coughs up on the festive food shop to make sure tummies are full on all the best grub – and that’s before they buy any meat.
In a video the family, from Lancashire, shared on their YouTube channel, dad Noel showed how he cooks a 10kg turkey, 7kg of potatoes and sprouts, 50 Yorkshire puddings, 80 pigs in blankets and litres of gravy.
The couple also stay up late peeling potatoes and vegetables at 1am on Christmas Day and children open their gifts by 6.30am.
In 2019, Noel cooked a turkey, some beef and a goose, but assured fans it’s not as hectic as it might seem.
“It’s Christmas day, there’s no rush, and like I say a Christmas dinner is just a Sunday dinner isn’t it, but with turkey and a few extra bits.
“There’s no point getting stressed over it,” he said.
Of course, with so many kids running round the cost of buying presents quickly adds up.
Sue said each kids gets between £100 – £200 spent on them, which usually works out at around 300 presents bought in total.
All those presents then need wrapping, and Sue and Noel get through a staggering 70 rolls of wrapping paper every year.
What’s more, Sue considers herself a “demon wrapper”, according to Mail Online as she can wrap a whopping 20 presents in just 15 minutes and has got her process down to a tee.
She added: “I buy presents through the year, and wrap them as they come in.
“One of our biggest headaches at Christmas is where to hide all the gifts. We have them everywhere — even in the boiler cupboard. The trick is remembering where.”
There are no guarantees when it comes to what gifts the kids want though, even though they do each write a list of the things they’d like, Sue admitted it’s not always possible to please everyone.
One year, Sue said she spent hours searching for a PS5 and a particular Barbie doll’s house but had to have a rethink when she saw the price.
“We have had to give up on the PS5 and we got the doll’s house eventually, but the cost was disgusting. It is supposed to be £240 but one site was offering it for over £700,” she explained.
Sue has received some pretty posh gifts over the years as well, in 2022 Noel splashed the cash on a bottle of Penhaligon’s Halfeti Cedar perfume, which costs a whopping £190.
He also forked out on a bottle of Bvlgari Le Gemme Tygar perfume too, which retails at £268.
And in 2020 the doting dad even treated Sue to a brand new engagement ring, since the diamond fell out of her original one, and the same year he also got her the slightly less romantic gift of a Shark vacuum.
One of our biggest headaches at Christmas is where to hide all the gifts. We have them everywhere — even in the boiler cupboard. The trick is remembering where.
Sue Radford
The kids get to open one present on Christmas Eve, which is usually a set of matching pyjamas, before the main event the next day.
During the day, the family play separate games of Monopoly, watch films and play with their presents.
Their huge 10 bedroom home in Morcombe gets fully decked out too – there’s four Christmas trees with personalised baubles and 25 stockings.
The family famously doesn’t rely on benefits and is totally supported by their pie shop business and have previously revealed they budget all year long to make Christmas as magical as possible.