‘My parents weren’t proud of me and my own brother didn’t trust me’ – Spencer Matthews opens up about his demons and reveals what wife Vogue REALLY thinks of his marathons in the desert

Call it obsession, addiction, passion, sheer lunacy, whatever – Spencer Matthews has it, in spades. The former star of Made In Chelsea, famous then for being his often-insufferable self, has reinvented himself in recent years to the point where he now must qualify as a professional derring-doer, if there is such a thing.

Spencer, 36, made it into the Guinness Book of Records last year for being the first person to run 30 marathons in 30 consecutive days on sand. 

An astonishing feat on so many levels (not least for someone who doesn’t have an athletic background) but, interestingly, it was a challenge even those close to him – including his wife, the presenter Vogue Williams – thought he was nuts to attempt. 

‘Oh my wife was of the opinion: “Well, that will kill you,”’ he admits. ‘My mum wasn’t very happy with me. Nobody was happy, really.’

He tells me that one of the first things Vogue, who was at home with their three young children ‘holding the fort’ as he was off testing the limits of human endurance, said to him on his return was: ‘Are you ever going to do anything like this again?’

Spencer Matthew’s next challenge – because, of course, there is always going to be a next challenge – sounds even more crazy. This one will see Spencer attempt to do seven Ironman-style triathlons across seven continents

‘I said: “Well, I’d love to do something like this every year for the next ten years.” It was the most amazing thing I’ve done in my life. Vogue said: “What?!!” Then she kindly requested that the next one doesn’t take 30 days, so I’m going to try to keep it to 20-something.’

His next challenge – because, of course, there is always going to be a next challenge – sounds even more crazy. This one will see Spencer attempt to do seven Ironman-style triathlons across seven continents. 

This challenge has been done before, but over the space of four years. Spencer is going to attempt it in less than four weeks. The biggest test will be the 2.4mile swim he will have to compete in Antarctica, where the water temperature will be just a fraction above freezing (‘although the biggest challenge at the moment is working out how we keep the leopard seals away from me. Those things weigh 350kilos and they will kill you. We are genuinely having meetings about that’).

He’s buzzing just talking about it, though. Spencer is like an excitable Labrador at the best of times (no surprises that he was diagnosed with ADHD in 2023), but he seems particularly excited by the idea that even he can’t see how he will pull this one off, given that he’s not actually a strong swimmer (‘Oh God, if you put me in even a calm pool now and asked me to swim that distance, there’s a good chance I would drown’).

Does this man have a death wish, then? Not exactly. It sounds more like he reached some sort of state of nirvana in that Jordanian desert, and would like to do it again. 

He spends quite a lot of time explaining to me just why his time in the desert was ‘truly transformational’, giving him a high that, frankly, beat any drug. 

‘Running on those red sands, through those canyons with old Red Hot Chilli Pepper songs thumping in your head, all through aggressively starry skies, with shooting stars. I mean I’ve got goosebumps just thinking about it now. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Apart from my beautiful children, of course.’

Spencer’s struggles with alcohol have been well documented. These days he runs Clean Co, an alcohol-free sprirt company, and when we meet is chuffed to have just secured a deal to provide 700 Greene King pubs across the UK with his drinks. Pictured in 2013

Spencer, 36, made it into the Guinness Book of Records last year for being the first person to run 30 marathons in 30 consecutive days on sand

Safe to say that extreme physical challenges in far-flung places are now his new addiction?

Addict is quite a dirty word,’ he says, pondering the question. ‘You associate addiction with sleeping on park benches, having issues with hard drugs and alcohol. But you can be addicted to positive things. I think it’s in your nature and, yes, it’s in my nature to hyper-focus. When you love something or someone and are obsessive or passionate about it, it’s not dissimilar to an addiction.’

Spencer’s struggles with alcohol have been well documented. These days he runs Clean Co, an alcohol-free sprirt company, and when we meet is chuffed to have just secured a deal to provide 700 Greene King pubs across the UK with his drinks. He first developed a problem when he was working as a city trader, drinking five to ten pints every day before taking clients out. 

The hard-partying lifestyle made him an attractive prospect for the Made In Chelsea casting team – and he more than delivered in terms of living the playboy lifestyle. In 2018, though, by the time Vogue, 39, was pregnant with their first child, Theodore, now six, he realised that he needed to stop. 

He doesn’t usually refer to himself as an alcoholic, but he does today. He also says that it was the disappointment in his wife’s eyes that made him want to turn his life around. 

‘She never gave me any ultimatum or anything but I could see in her eyes that she was getting very bored of who I was becoming. I think that when you start to resent your partner in that way, even if there is not a clear discussion about it, then you are on dangerous territory. I believe I would have lost everything. She would have left me, because my drinking was that bad. But while it started off being for Vogue, I then got addicted to the feeling of sobriety, if that makes sense.’

Is he also addicted to the feeling of suddenly being hailed as one of life’s winners, too?

Our interview today is timed to coincide with the launch of his new podcast, which is called Untapped and is ‘about the untapped potential in us all’. In it he will interview fellow high-achievers (the Olympic hero Mo Farah is an early guest), and try to illicit tips to ‘unlock the power of human potential’.

Spencer already has success as a podcaster. He’s presented a string of them – one of the most listened-to alongside the long-suffering Vogue. Their funny banter won them millions of followers. Yet he seems to have come home from the desert and told her that he didn’t want to do it any more. Indeed he pulled the plug on all his other, more jovial, podcasts, to concentrate on this one with ‘more meaning’.

Spencer’s relationship with his family is complicated. Most know that he grew up in a life of extraordinary privilege, his hotelier parents owning the famous Eden Rock hotel on the Caribbean island of St Barths. Pictured with his two older brothers, James and Michael

Spencer says his wife, Vogue, is completely behind him, and that the example he is setting for his kids is an epic one

‘A lot of the content I was providing before lacked… well, it was entertaining, and I loved doing that, but my time in the desert really did change me, left me thinking: “Who am I?” I thought if I can go from being this unhappy turbulent alcoholic who honestly couldn’t see a way forward, either professionally or socially, then maybe I can help other people too. 

‘I mean the idea that someone like me – who was a slave to the bottle, really – can push through all that self-loathing and reach a place of pride, was transformational. I could see that pride in everyone – in Vogue, my parents, in my brother. It was a powerful thing.’

He mentions a surprise party Vogue threw him on his return, in which he could physically ‘see the pride in my family’s eyes’. I think he might cry even telling me about it, because this is a man who was hard-wired to spot disappointment in the eyes of even those closest to him.

Spencer’s relationship with his family is complicated. Most know that he grew up in a life of extraordinary privilege, his hotelier parents owning the famous Eden Rock hotel on the Caribbean island of St Barths. He had two older brothers, James and Michael, who had a less affluent start in life (David Matthews made the bulk of his fortune when Spencer was very young). Both brothers were heroes to him – and both were consumed by passion for extreme sports.

In 1999, when Spencer was ten, Michael paid the ultimate price when he became the youngest Brit ever to conquer Everest. He was 22. He never came home, perishing on the mountain where his body still lies. Spencer has told me before of how his marathons – particularly ones at altitude – are linked to Michael in some way that even he doesn’t quite understand. ‘I call it “thin air”,’ he repeats today. ‘When the oxygen is depleted, I feel closer to Michael.’

What emerges in our interview today, though, is that the relationship between the two surviving brothers, James and Spencer, became increasingly uneasy.

While James was undoubtedly a high-achiever, professionally and socially (he runs his own business and famously married Pippa Middleton, sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, in 2017), Spencer was more of a loose cannon. His joining the cast of Made In Chelsea when he was 19 – then becoming a regular in the tabloid press due to his ‘antics’ – was very much frowned upon in his social circles.

In 1999, when Spencer was ten, Michael paid the ultimate price when he became the youngest Brit ever to conquer Everest. He was 22. He never came home, perishing on the mountain where his body still lies

‘My family have always loved me but I was the rogue black sheep,’ he says. ‘I was out every night, getting up to God knows what. If my son turned out like I was, I’d lock him in a room somewhere. It would be awful.’

As the eldest son, 13 years Spencer’s senior, James, 49, set the standard – and the bar was high: ‘I used to look up to him enormously. He was the pinnacle of morality, honesty, hard work, all that.’ He was also supremely sporty – a marathon runner, no less. He once did a six-marathon challenge in France. At the time, Spencer resented that sort of achievement rather than found inspiration in it. ‘Because I was so full of self-loathing, I was thinking: “Weirdo.”’

And now the tables have turned and he is the Mr Marathon of the family? He nods: ‘‘We are more similar now than we ever have been. Growing up if I could have been more like James and Mike, I would have been happier for it, I think. I behaved in ways that they never have, with alcohol and the party scene and London. They didn’t grow up with that, and I did.’

The sense of being the one who let the family down had never quite left him, it seems. It certainly drove a wedge between him and his eldest brother for a while, although he says they are close now.

‘I spent the majority of my adult life feeling that my parents weren’t really proud of me and that my brother didn’t really trust me. He would withhold certain bits of information from me because he thought I was dangerous.’

He declines to explain more. ‘I don’t really want to drag him into this, but I don’t mean dangerous in that way. He just wouldn’t want to say certain things to me in case it ended up in the newspapers. He just didn’t trust me because it is really difficult to trust someone with a serious drinking problem. You don’t really need to know what they are going to say or do, or who their drinking buddy at the bar is going to be.’

Does your brother trust you now? ‘My brother would pick up the phone to me if he was in the middle of an important business meeting. We are brothers.’

He wouldn’t have done that before? He shakes his head. ‘He wouldn’t have answered my phonecall if he was lounging around on the sofa – not that he ever was. No, there was a divide between us. There was the family and then there was me over here somewhere, for a while, and it was a case that there were these awkward conversations with them trying to help me but in reality just pissing me off. It’s impossible to tell someone who has a big drinking problem that they have a drink problem. People who are told they drink too much typically respond very badly.’

They didn’t actually come out and tell you, to your face, that you were a waste-of-space, though, did they?

Spencer with two of his children at the Moana 2 premiere in November last year

‘There was a bit of that. My family are all straight talkers, so there was a little bit of it, but my reaction was: “Well, I’m on a hit TV show.” I was mistaking that with actual success and pride. I was a pawn in a large machine, essentially being used for entertainment purposes. It’s not success, getting paid for nothing.

‘I don’t look back very fondly of my time in that show, to be honest. I respect the people who made it. It’s an amazing product and they were able to win a Bafta with us. It’s still running. Hats off to them. But…’

Safe to say that James wasn’t a Made In Chelsea fan.

‘He’s always been a supporting loving brother but I would talk to him about certain things and he’d look at me as if I was insane. There wasn’t much respect in our relationship, but to be honest, I didn’t really deserve any respect at the time. I’m not really an “everyone deserves respect” kind of guy. I think you have to earn respect, and I hadn’t.’

And you have now? ‘It didn’t take me having to run 30 marathons to earn their respect, but it certainly helped.’

Fair play to Spencer, he has indeed proved that demons can be a powerful driving force. It sounds though that he still feels he has something to prove. We talk for a little about whether it is selfish of him to head off adventuring and expect Vogue to hold the fort again. He says she is completely behind him, and that the example he is setting for his kids is an epic one. ‘And it’s not as if Vogue is just sitting at home waiting. Vogue works 12-hour days, but we are a team – and we’re very lucky to have grandparents down the road who pitch in. We are at the time in our life where driving forward and building stuff is important. It would be easy to sit back and look after the kids and relax and not do too much but…

‘I don’t think it is possible to achieve something extraordinary by behaving in an ordinary way.’

• Untapped, Spencer Matthews’ new weekly podcast, launches today on all platforms. Produced by the team at High Performance and co-hosted by Jake Quickenden.