Jade Thirlwall has revealed she realised her boyfriend Jordan Stephens was ‘The One’ after his sweet gesture to cheer her up following Jesy Nelson’s shock exit from Little Mix.

The singer, 32, has been dating the Rizzle Kicks frontman for four years, and in a new interview, she recalled that she first realised he was a keeper when he bought her a pasty from Greggs to lift her spirits.

Reflecting on Jesy’s exit from Little Mix in 2020, Jade told The Louis Theroux Podcast that she ‘broke down in tears,’ when she decided to leave the band, and Jordan’s response was to fetch her a treat from the bakery chain.

She said: ‘We were driving up North to see my family. I just wailed and wailed for an hour or something.

‘We parked up at services and he was like, ”do you want some peace?”. And I was like, ”yes”.’

‘That’s when I knew he was a keeper because he was like, ”are you alright on your own for a little bit?”. I mean, I couldn’t actually speak. So I was screaming.

Jade Thirlwall has revealed she realised her boyfriend Jordan Stephens was ‘The One’ after his sweet gesture to cheer her up following Jesy Nelson’s shock exit from Little Mix 

Reflecting on Jesy’s exit from Little Mix in 2020, Jade told The Louis Theroux Podcast that she ‘broke down in tears,’ when she decided to leave the band

‘And then he went out into the shops and he came back with a pasty from Greggs and I thought, ”that’s the one”.’

Jade went onto add that she ‘grieved’ for Jesy’s exit from Little Mix when she decided to leave the girl group, and they haven’t spoken since.

She said: ‘I was dating Jordan, it was very early days at the time. And so I was scared to show him what this meant for me.

‘I think in his head he was like, ”Oh, you were a band, someone left, that happens all the time”.

‘We were driving. I was being really short with him. Then honestly, out of nowhere, I literally bellowed like a f***ing whale or something.

‘I’d never cried like that since my grandad died when I was 13.

‘I think it was all the years of love and everything we’d been through together — the good things, the bad things, you know, and enabling behaviours or being there for each other.’

Earlier this month Jesy shared the news that she is expecting twins with her boyfriend Zion Foster.

Jade has been dating Jordan for four years, and she recalled that she first realised he was a keeper when he bought her a pasty from Greggs to lift her spirits

Earlier this month Jesy shared the news that she is expecting twins with her boyfriend Zion Foster 

Jade went onto add that she ‘grieved’ for Jesy’s exit from Little Mix when she decided to leave the girl group, and they haven’t spoken since

Jade found global fame in 2011, when she won The X Factor alongside Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jesy and Perrie Edwards.

But she also explained to Louis that she ended up ‘lonely’ despite her success.

She said: ‘I was really in quite a dark place, and my mum had to come on the road with me on tour because I think she was really concerned of what would happen if she wasn’t there.’

Asked if it was lonely for her, she said: ‘Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, and always when we were probably at our biggest as well, like when we’d have our biggest career moments is probably when I would feel like the worst. 

‘So I do understand in that respect.’

Jade explained that there was a certain ‘pressure’ put on herself and her bandmates as they racked up hit singles like Love Me Like You, Black Magic and Confetti.

She said: ‘So I think when you’ve got that pressure on you, you know for us as women you’re like becoming a woman in the public eye and you’re trying to maintain relationships outside of that, your work to the bone. 

She added: ‘I definitely had moments where I did have very severe like depression or anxiety. 

‘There was one era where I was really in quite a dark place, and my mum had to come on the road with me on tour because I think she was really concerned of what would happen if she wasn’t there.

I think like the bigger you get, the more your sort of condition that you have to latch on to that or you have to keep that up because if you come anywhere below that, you’re then flopping, which is so stupid to think of because it’s like, okay, if the next song’s not a number one hit, you flopped. 

‘And I think that was not so much now, but especially like 10 years ago that was the mentality of like the industry or like public perception.’

The Louis Theroux Podcast is available on Spotify now.