Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo break silence on ‘lavender marriage’ claim: ‘I’m down for that’

Raising Chelsea stars Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo have addressed claims they are in a “lavender marriage” after people online decided he was gay.

The married couple, whose relationship was documented on Made in Chelsea, recently welcomed their first child Ziggy. They tied the knot in 2023, but have been plagued with accusations that Laing is gay and Habboo is his beard.

Speaking on Olivia Attwood’s podcast Olivia’s House, they got stuck in with the claims.

“Is it exhausting being his beard?” Attwood asked Habboo, who laughed: “It really is. Guys, my back is aching!”

Candy Kittens boss Laing quickly added: “Can I just say… I’m not gay.”

Habboo replied: “I would say today is the most gay you’ve appeared. You’re just flamboyant on another level today.”

Attwood went on to explain for listeners who might have missed it. “For back reference, we’re not outing Jamie on this podcast, this is the Daily Mail comments,” she said. “This is the Daily Mail commenters. They basically say, ‘There’s something off about this relationship. This man is gay.’ How does that make you feel, on a serious note?”

Habboo said: “Are they all gunning for the lavender marriage? I’m like down for that. I thought they were saying we have a lovely, flowery, gorgeous marriage, not calling me a f****** beard!”

Laing jumped in with a funny story which showed it wasn’t just online trolls who thought he was gay.

“When I started my Radio 1 show with Vick Hope, who’s married to Calvin Harris, at the beginning, we’d just done the BRITS, and she said: ‘You’ll never guess what my husband said.’ And I was like, ‘Calvin Harris? What did he say?’

“She was like, ‘He saw a picture of you in the Mail and I was like, that’s my co-host,’ and Calvin Harris was like, ‘Who’s that with him?’ And Vick said: ‘That’s his wife.’ And he went: ‘Oh, I thought he was gay.’

“So it’s like, spread. Which, by the way, I think it’s a compliment. I’m in for it.”

Clearly taking it on the chin, Habboo added: “You love a heel. You love dying your hair. You love Botox. He went and got laser last night.”

What is a lavendar marriage?

Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo aren’t the only famous faces linked to a “lavender marriage”. Wicked Cynthia Erivo joked on Instagram that she and her gay co-star Jonathan Bailey were in one too.

A lavender marriage is a term that describes a wedding, usually between a man and a woman, in which one or both partners are LGBTQ+, with the entire relationship only existing to conceal their sexual orientation.

They were particularly common in the early to mid 20th-century, when being openly gay could destroy a celebrity’s career. For example, in Hollywood’s “golden era” of the 1940s and 1950s, publicists often arranged lavender marriages to maintain a male star’s “marketable image” as a heartthrob, but queer people who weren’t in the public eye often formed lavender marriages too, for safety, security and a veneer of respectability.

Gay actor Rock Hudson’s 1955 wedding to Phyllis Gates is widely believed to have been a studio-driven attempt to quell speculation about his sexuality, and another often-referenced example is Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. Several Hollywood historians and biographers have written that Minnelli had relationships with men, particularly before he became a major director at MGM.

Also, actress Rita Hayworth’s marriage to director Orson Welles and the union between actor Cary Grant and heiress Barbara Hutton are sometimes included in discussions of potential lavender marriage.

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