Rochelle and Marvin Humes appear to be able to read each other’s minds. When HELLO! visited the set of The Hit List in Glasgow back in March, the couple - who tied the knot back in 2012 and share three children together - had a dynamic that seems totally effortless - but does it actually take some work?
“Of course!” Rochelle tells us. “You are working with your husband at the end of the day, you are working with your wife, it's great that we know each other so well but we’ll say, ‘Did you forget to put the bins out?’ We don’t leave it at home so if there are any of those little debacles, they’re definitely very much with us.
“But we know we’re lucky. To be honest, we’re just grateful and try and see it as a little time away in Glasgow. We go to all of the nice places there!”
Marvin adds: “We have to communicate constantly with three kids. We’re just so in tune that actually it's a thing that we can do so well together. We are busy, we’re taping three episodes a day. There's a lot to sort of turn around in that time, and I think it's a good job we do know each other so well. It's probably difficult if you didn't know someone as well as we do because we're in such a rhythm. Everything rolls along nicely.”
He continues: “We’re in a unique position where Rochelle’s worked with a lot of people on This Morning, for example, and has great relationships with those people, but it's never going to be the same as working as your husband because you do know there's no wall there because you’re working with someone that you know inside out.
“We lose the pleasantries don’t we? If there’re words [that Rochelle isn’t sure of], she’ll say, ‘You’re definitely doing that one.’ There’s no pleasantries. We lost those after the first day!”
The popular music quiz, which has a fastest finger first format where teams have to guess the song name and artist by the intro, has had a very impressive run, with seven series airing in just five years - but what does it take for the parents-of-three to make the logistics work?
“We fly to Glasgow, the kids stay with Roch’s mum, we do 12 episodes in 4 days, and are up here for 5 days in total,” Marvin explains. “It is intense, but it's a good kind of intense. It’s not a chore.
“We're very fortunate that it gets received so well, not only from our side with contestants but also from the viewers,” he adds. “Obviously it does really well for the BBC, so it's just win-win all round. It’s a break for us and we get to spend a bit of time together.”
Since Rochelle’s mother takes over childcare for their three children, Alaia-Mai, 11, Valentina, six and three-year-old Blake, the couple’s work trip even feels like something of a break.
“It's quite a good way for us in terms of when everyone always says, work smarter, not harder, to try and make the most out of our time,’ Rochelle says. “We really maximise our time when we’re in Scotland with no distractions, no school drops, my mum literally has the kids for four days and then nothing really happens until we're promoting it.”
The childcare arrangement certainly sounds like a smart one, with the pair revealing that they once tried to bring their two eldest children to Glasgow for filming, only for it not to go exactly as planned.
“We learned the hard way didn’t we,” Marvin says. “We brought the kids to Glasgow with us with Roch’s mum, I think it was for our second series. It was a bit pointless because we didn’t see them, we did when we finished or when they came to the studio.”
“My mum knows every museum in Glasgow,” Rochelle jokes. “It’s better that they stay put. It wasn’t fun for them. Now they’re in school, my mum will do the school drop and it’s much easier.”
But what do their youngsters think of the show?
“They love it,” Rochelle says fondly. “I think it's the thing that they can enjoy because everybody can watch and do it together, so they can sit and watch it with our friends and our parents because it's a real family show.”
And would they ever follow in their parents’ footsteps to be keen to try their hand at a kid’s version of The Hit List, perhaps? Marvin has the answer. “They can host it and we can have a day off!”
The Hit List returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer this Saturday at 6PM.