Ulrika Jonsson is standing “tall and proud” with Stacey Solomon following an online comment about her having children by different fathers – and says she was always “stumped by the injustice” of her own “4×4” nickname.
TV presenter Jonsson, best known for her work on Gladiators and Shooting Stars in the 1990s, has four children with four different men and was infamously given the epithet by critics following the birth of her youngest.
Loose Women host and former X Factor star Solomon, 31, has two sons from previous relationships as well as a little boy with fiance Joe Swash, and responded when an Instagram user highlighted this online.
Stacey Solomon has a son with fiance Joe Swash, and two older boys. Pic: Hubert Boesl/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
Commenting on one of her posts, the user said it “must be very sad having three different dads for your boys”.
Solomon replied to say her children “are the best thing that ever happened” to her.
In a newspaper column, Jonsson, 53, defended Solomon and criticised the double standards for men and women.
“The simple truth – which applies to both me and Stacey – is that we are good, caring mothers,” Jonsson wrote in The Sun. “We chose to have our children – we longed for them, regardless of the circumstances of their creation.
“We love them more than anything in the world. And we both nurture our children, keep them by our sides, care for and pay for them. We did not sow our seeds and disappear.
“We chose to take responsibility, to carry these creations in our own arms, sometimes with the assistance of others, sometimes on our own.
“I fail to see the issue with that. My children see themselves as whole siblings and are better adjusted than many other children I know.”
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Jonsson also asked the question, “why don’t men ever get stick for it?”, and listed male stars who have had children with different women, such as Bob Marley, Rod Stewart, Jude Law, Liam Gallagher, Paul Weller and Eddie Murphy.
She said she was “stumped by the injustice” of her 4×4 nickname and said the intention was to “hurt and, above all, to shame a woman”.
She continued: “I didn’t particularly want to be associated with the label because I felt no sense of shame. At all.”
She recalled being criticised for her family life by a Loose Women panel 12 years ago and being introduced as 4×4 by a young Jack Whitehall after her stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2009.
“So I stand tall and proud with Ms Solomon,” she said. “Who knows, had life taken yet another turn, I might have had more children by more men.”