Matt Willis has revealed that his wife, Strictly Come Dancing presenter Emma Willis, has been excluded from a family WhatsApp group chat – but she still manages to work things out. During a recent podcast appearance, the Busted musician opened up about life with wife Emma and their children, Isabelle, 18, Ace, 14, and Trixie, ten.
Secret group chat for McDonald's trips
Matt, 43, revealed that he, Isabelle, and Ace often secretly plot outings together, without Emma having a clue what is really going on. Speaking to Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe on their Parenting Hell podcast, Matt revealed: "A couple of times, like me and Isabelle and Ace have a secret WhatsApp group called Golden Arches, which we go to McDonald's, and like it's our little thing, and Emma's not on it, Emma doesn't approve."
"So I will just message them just a question mark, and they'll just get back to me straight away, and we'll disappear to McDonald's, I love it." He went on to add: "But she'll [Emma], track us there and she'll go 'I see you', so that's when it falls down."
Tracking via Life360
The family remain tight-knit, often tracking one another on Life360, and this is how Emma has managed to track her husband and their children after not being included in plans.
Matt and Emma previously fronted the two-part Channel 4 documentary, Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones, which saw The Stanway School in Colchester encourage Year 8 students to hand over their phones and social media accounts for 21 days.
Impact on parenting and children's accents
But did the production change the way Matt parented his three children? He commented: "I went into it with quite an open mind, right, because I was like, phones are now so part of our life, right, how can we really expect our kids not to have this, you know, and I kind of went into it with a really open mind about that."
"We did this show, and it blew my head apart, I mean, how kind of damaging they are to kids in every possible way that you could... Yeah, damage them, the phone is kind of doing that, you know, and it definitely made us think twice."
"But then when they went to secondary school, they had to have a smartphone, because their homework's on it, their schedules on it, all this kind of stuff, so we were told we had to get them a smartphone when they went to secondary school. But now Trixie will definitely not have one."
While Matt and Emma often keep their children's identity under wraps, he finds it "weird" that they have "posh" accents. Both Matt and Emma came from working-class backgrounds, with Matt growing up in South London and Emma growing up in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham.
Speaking about his children, Matt said: "They're quite posh. Like the way they talk, and like Emma's like a Brummie, you know, and when she's around other people that she grew up with, she's very Brummie. And like I'm from a working-class background, but my kids are like, 'Daddy!'"
"Which is very strange, you know, like, and but also I change my voice when I'm around them a little bit, they make me a bit posher. Which I quite like."
