Born in Essex in 1985, Harry Judd is best known as the drummer in McFly, one of the most successful 00s groups, with tracks such as Obviously and All About You. He has also performed with supergroup McBusted. Judd has three children with his wife, Izzy, a violinist. She hosts the podcast Let’s Talk Neurodivergent Kids, available now on all platforms.
Harry
This was in St Lucia, moments after I proposed to Izzy. We had flown in that afternoon and were jetlagged, but I wanted to get down on one knee straight away. Our lovely waitress came with drinks and took that photo. My expression? Probably relief. I had been so anxious about getting it right. As soon as we got on the sunbeds the next morning, Izzy immediately got a notepad and pen out. She was like: “Right, so it’s you, me, Mum, Dad …”
I first met Izzy in Bristol in 2005. McFly were doing a radio show in a church and Izzy was one of the string players. Being only 19, I remember pulling up in our tour bus and saying to the other guys: “I wonder what the girls in the orchestra will be like?” When we got inside, I shook her hand and instantly thought: “Ooh, I fancy her.” She had a really kind and pretty face, and that’s my thing.
The orchestra were coming on tour with us, so I was looking forward to seeing Izzy every day. But shortly after our first meeting, she got the mumps and missed all the rehearsals and the first two weeks of shows. She did eventually join, but little did I know our management had told the musicians they weren’t allowed to speak to the band. They’d handled a couple of groups before, and knew to avoid any drama, they should prevent us all from mixing. I would sometimes knock on the girls’ dressing room door and ask if anyone wanted a cigarette, but Izzy would hide because she didn’t want to get in trouble.
On the night of our penultimate show, I got our security guy to go and tell Izzy that I needed a word with her. She thought she had done something wrong! But I just wanted to see her on her own. It was then we had our first kiss – at the St David’s Hotel in Cardiff. The tour wrapped the next night and she came back on the bus with the band. After that, she never left.
Everyone fancied Danny and Dougie, so it wasn’t as if I was bombarded by fans all the time, but thankfully Izzy trusted me instinctively. I remember a couple of people around her saying: “Be careful.” But I was never that showbiz. We are a band who like home comforts and to keep it real.
Izzy was different from anyone I’d ever met – I didn’t have to try to be anyone I wasn’t. But at first there was a bit of an imbalance between us. Izzy is two years older, plus she’s a girl – girls generally have it together more than men. She didn’t drink, which caused a few issues when it came to partying, and she struggled with separation anxiety, which would put some pressure on our relationship. If I was out, she would call asking, “When are you coming home?” and I’d be saying, “You’re so boring!”
I had all this responsibility at such a young age – I was working all the time, I owned a property, I had a serious girlfriend, and most of my mates were still at uni having fun and being carefree. I wasn’t ready to settle yet. So, when I was 23, we broke up for six months. I had been dealing with anxiety myself, and in that time apart, I realised it was time to stop drinking. Mostly it just hit home that I couldn’t let this person go.
Izzy is really caring. She brings me a cup of tea every morning. We have an unspoken set of jobs around the house, which is pretty much 50-50. I do the garden and bins, I cook and do the dishwasher. But she does more in terms of parenting, because the kids generally want Mummy. I couldn’t do what she does as a mother. She is so selfless.
Often it’s 8.30pm before Izzy and I have had a chance to speak to each other, usually while lying in bed. From my experience of more than 10 years of marriage and having three children, I can see that things go wrong when people don’t adjust to the mundane realities of everyday life – the bills, mortgages, tantrums, food shops and school drop-offs. It also helps if you can have a sense of humour about it – Izzy and I are always laughing about the endless lunacy of being a parent.
We had a reading from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin at our wedding. I always think about the line “Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground” – a sentiment that, 20 years in, has never been more true.
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Izzy
I had some suspicion that Harry might propose on holiday, but I didn’t think he’d do it the first night. So even though I had loads of lovely dresses with me, I threw on a black vest instead, not thinking it would be a big moment. After the proposal, we ate steak and dauphinoise potatoes, and I had non-alcoholic champagne. It was an out-of-body experience, but my expression is one of contentment.
I’d come out of a long relationship when we met, and I’d lost my grandmother a few months before, so I was not in the headspace to fall in love. But … I really fancied him. He was more tactile than anybody I had been with, and we could just talk and talk. He was great with my family, too. My oldest brother, Rupert, was in a car crash when he was 18, and has a serious brain injury. I took Harry to meet him early on in our relationship – it meant a lot that he was able to be relaxed around Rupert. Sometimes those micro moments are more important than any grand gesture of romance.
The first morning I stayed over at the McFly house, I woke to the sound of his tour manager banging on the door. That was Harry’s alarm. Everything was done for him, either by a tour manager or their lovely PA, Wendy – from cashing cheques to booking Valentine’s Day dinners. In spite of that, McFly are the nicest boys. Which has made the strange, inconsistent experience of being in a band easier for Harry. Especially as we definitely don’t have a Wendy to help any more!
Having children has shaped our relationship completely. When we decided to start trying for a baby, we had a miscarriage, which was so difficult; we really grieved. After that, we ended up doing IVF – which was successful in the end, but also an incredibly lonely experience. A lot of those feelings of isolation are really similar to raising a neurodivergent child. But it’s also given us both so much perspective: we are constantly advocating for them, and staying focused on our intuition about what’s right for our family. I couldn’t have gone through what I’ve been through without Harry’s loyalty and support.
Whenever we get a chance, Harry and I go for brunch and then see a matinee musical – we’re too knackered to do evenings! Even after all these years, I still find him as interesting as I did when we first met.