Victoria Coren's famous husband she decided to marry just hours after meeting

02 October 2023 , 18:30

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Victoria Coren's famous husband she decided to marry just hours after meeting

Victoria Coren-Mitchell is back on our screens tonight with another episode of Only Connect, the fiendishly hard quiz show only the very cleverest can win.

The British presenter, writer and professional poker player has been a staple on our screen, both in hosting duties and on panel shows, for many years. She also has a very famous husband who she made the decision she was going to marry just hours after meeting him - David Mitchell.

Twenty years since the iconic sitcom Peep Show landed on our TV screens in 2003, David Mitchell is still recognisable as his bumbling, nerdy character Mark, alongside his comedy partner Robert Webb as Jeremy.

David and Victoria have been married for more than a decade. Opening up about meeting for the first time, it was clearly love at first sight, with Victoria, 51, admitting that within hours she knew she would marry him one day. Introduced to one another by fellow comedian David Baddiel, at the same film premiere in 2007, Victoria said: "He specifically said to me, 'There’s David Mitchell over there, I think you should probably marry him, I’ll get the ball rolling by introducing you. I thought that was ridiculous but, a couple of hours later, I thought I would probably marry him."

David Mitchell on Would I Lie To You with wife Victoria Coren Mitchell (BBC/Zeppotron, an Endemol Shine Company/Brian Ritchie)

The pair immediately clicked and connected with one another but the timing wasn’t right. With Victoria having just lost her father, they didn’t go on their first date until three years later in 2010. Speaking to The Guardian, David said: "I waited three years. Isn’t that weird? Aren’t I odd? I can’t explain it other than to say I couldn’t do anything else. If only I’d known I just had to wait three years… I would gladly have suffered 10 times as much."

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Two years after that first date, the couple tied-the-knot, with David admitting he would have proposed even sooner if it hadn’t seemed “mad” to do so quite so quickly. A few years after their wedding, David and Victoria welcomed their daughter Barbara Elizabeth June Mitchell.

Speaking about his daughter on The Jonathan Ross Show in 2018, David comically said: “Unfortunately, there is nothing like having a tiny child who's safety you are responsible for to make you worry. You really don't want the world to spin into the sun and explode. You thought you didn't want it before but you really don't want it [after having a child.]

“That is the real downside of parenthood, and I suppose any form of love, is it makes you fear more… I would say love is not a stress reduction exercise is it? What you want is a long period of bland contentment… I'm a family man. I've made bad choices and I am constantly worried.”

Jesting aside, David hasn’t shied away from how “hopelessly in love” he is with Victoria. In his book he gushed: "She’s not only too wonderful, she’s too right for me. She’s funny, bright, sexy, nervous and confident in ways that could have been meant for me. I feel very lucky.” He added: "I am just incredibly proud that someone like Victoria wants to be with me. She has these amazing qualities, but fundamentally, we clicked. I fell in love with her."

The feelings between the two are clearly mutual, with Victoria telling The Telegraph in a previous interview: "I mean, he's a hugely successful television comedian, he could have had a gorgeous 24-year-old skinny wife with a tiny nose and a string bikini, but he chose me! Me! I am filled with this bizarre mix of thinking David could have done a lot better than me and feeling we're so alike and complement each other so wonderfully that we are the ideal match and couldn't possibly be with anyone else."

Now being part of a family of three, Would I Lie to You star David says his priorities are totally different, though he still loves his work. "There’s always something on your mind which is a different priority, a home you have to keep safe and supplied, and to make sure that our daughter is happy and seeing us a lot," he explained.

While the couple keep their life very private generally, they did make an appearance on Celebrity Gogglebox in 2020 with fans calling for them to become “regulars”. Their commentary on shows such as dating programme Five Guys a Week had viewers in stitches.

Louise Lazell