Ben Shephard became visibly emotional during Monday's episode of This Morning as he shared rare personal details about his family life. The 51-year-old presenter, who co-hosts the ITV show with Cat Deeley, opened up about his youngest son Jack's 19th birthday over the weekend.
Speaking on the programme, Shephard said: 'It was Jack's 19th birthday on Saturday. I know I don't look old enough!' When asked about his wife Annie, he explained that Jack was celebrating with his brother Sam in Bristol, adding: 'They had a big party, but it's that moment where...a friend of ours messaged us saying that 19 years ago, Annie held Jack in her arms for the first time. It was quite a moment.'
The Tipping Point host, who has been married to Annie since 2004, also made light of the empty house, joking: 'But they weren't home, so it was brilliant, and the house was tidy! We had a very nice weekend.'
Earlier in the week, Shephard had surprised his co-stars by admitting his family often went naked around each other when his children were growing up. Discussing Amanda Holden's confession about cooking nude, Shephard said: 'Yeah - why not? Come on. We'd have a laugh.' He added: 'We go cliff jumping together, it's never been an issue. The boys are 20 and 18 now so we're probably all a little bit more discreet but growing up, if people weren't naked over the weekend, we hadn't had a normal weekend!'
Shephard rarely discusses his private life but previously revealed the difficulty of his eldest son Sam leaving for university. He said: 'We're struggling with this as well in our house. I think one of the things we do when Sam's gone back to uni is we organise to actually do something so they've gone, so we'll go out for a walk or go out for a drink or go out for dinner and we will distract from the fact the house is suddenly quiet.'
