The now 53-year-old, from Morecambe, said they “were both just kids” in the eyes of the law. Noel was just 17 when he found out he was going to become a dad for the first time.
And the couple didn’t “get a knock on the door saying he’d be in trouble”. He spilled the beans in their new book, The Radfords: Making Life Count.
Noel wrote in the book: “What happened back then has obviously been brought up again in recent years, after we became known by going on television.”
He added: “People have inevitably talked about the situation and it has been written about in the newspapers and discussed on social media.
“There has been a lot of focus on it and, in a way, it was probably worse for us than when it actually happened. So many people have given their opinions.
“But we were both kids it was not as if I was 10 or 15 years older than Sue. For a lot of people, though, things are just black and white and you are tarnished with the same brush as other people in totally different situations.
“We were young and we were daft. But we wanted to continue as a couple.”
The dad said despite him being over the age of consent, while Sue was below it, he wasn’t in any bother with the authorities. He claimed back then it was “down to your mums and dads”.