Our favourite posh presenter and property guru Kirstie Allsopp seems to have it all in a thoroughly modern way. But her secrets to domestic bliss have a decidedly old-fashioned ring to them
Kirstie in the kitchen of her West London home. 'Houses are for living in and being yourself in,' she says
If Kirstie Allsopp were running the country – hold on, isn’t that a lovely thought? So lovely, in fact, I think we should all hear it again – if Kirstie Allsopp were running the country, wives would defer to their husbands, nobody would throw litter and we’d all lovingly gild our own table decorations at Christmas. We’d proudly display our wedding photos no matter how dated our hair looks, conveyancing nightmares would be a thing of the past, and keeping our cupboards tidy would be written into the constitution.
If you think all this sounds like an episode of Mad Men, you’re not too far from the truth. The gloriously plummy presenter of Location, Location, Location is a die-hard fan of the cult 1960s show, and a doughty champion of traditional values.
‘I was watching Betty Draper the other day and she was wearing a housecoat,’ reflects Kirstie, 39, dreamily. ‘It occurred to me that we don’t have those any more and I think they’re overdue a comeback. I don’t possess any lounging-about clothes, and a pretty housecoat might be just the thing – perhaps I should design one.’
To demonstrate, she throws open her wardrobe door to reveal a rail of Stepford Wives dresses in one closet and a spookily regimented row of jackets and cardies in the other. There is nothing in-between: no skirts, no trousers, no jeans, and most definitely nothing that could be mistaken for loungewear, unless it’s the sort of lounge that serves whisky sours until 2am.
‘Dresses are easy and require no thought or time-wasting, and I want to maximise time with my children – so I had a clear-out and ruthlessly culled everything else. There are ten rails of clothes bagged and ready for the charity shop.’ Of course, I immediately demand to know which charity shop. And the postcode. And full Ordnance Survey coordinates.
Kirstie with the two men in her life: Co-presenter Phil Spencer (left) and partner Ben Andersen
But, Kirstie being Kirstie, such things require extensive research. (She and her sweetly
biddable sidekick Phil Spencer, in his posh-boy Crombie coat, didn’t reach the status of the UK’s property p*rnographers-in-chief without showing some attention to detail.) ‘I need to check how much each charity spends on admin costs before I hand anything over.’ She says this with her trademark mix of bossy prefect primness and level-headed practicality, and I make a mental note to copy her slavishly. Like every other
right-thinking woman in the country, you see, I have an epic girl-crush on Kirstie – partner of property developer Ben Andersen, mother to their two sons, aged four and two (heroically named Bay Atlas and Oscar Hercules), stepmother to two more, friend of the Camerons, and vocal ambassador for Keep Britain Tidy – who, whenever she sees a driver throw rubbish out of his car, pops it back in again with the succinct advice: ‘Don’t be a tosser.’
Kirstie’s physical charms are undeniable – just so you know, she’s a trim 12 to 14, rather than the size 16 she might appear on television – but our national pash has less to do with her creamy English rose complexion, full mouth and unabashedly curvaceous figure than the fact that she has common sense written through her like
a stick of rock. At a time when our screens are populated with pliant, pretty dollybirds (Christine Bleakley, Alex Jones, Tess Daly), Kirstie is the epitome of fiercely intelligent femininity. Yes, she may be about to embark on her second series of Kirstie’s Homemade Home, and she can talk knowledgeably for hours about thread counts,
but she’s also slayed ’em on Question Time and is advising the government on housing strategy.
‘Without wishing to sound smug, I have the most lovely life,’ she says, back in soft-focus mode. In this terminally discontented day and age that’s a brave admission, but then her appeal lies in her refreshing, discomfiting forthrightness. ‘I knew Nick Ashley, son of the designer Laura, when I was growing up, and I remember asking his mother the secret of domestic bliss – she replied it was putting her husband first, her children second and the business third. That’s what I’ve done and, while I might be in charge when I’m at work, at home my husband is the boss.’ Cue a collective intake
of breath, even from the most dedicated Allsopp acolytes. Um, isn’t that a bit, you know, un-PC? ‘No, I genuinely believe it’s a recipe for success.’
She continues blithely, ‘I love my partner. He’s a wonderful father and a wonderful man and the one person who will tell me to get off my high horse, which everyone needs, especially me. I constantly foster the idea among his sons that he’s brilliant and strong and infallible, which I think is hugely important. I would never disagree or argue with Ben in front of the children, and I cringe when I see women belittling their husbands in public; it’s demeaning and does the children no good. What sort of message are these mothers sending out? It’s the same in Peppa Pig when they refer
to “silly Daddy”. It really puts my teeth on edge.’
'I cringe when women belittle their husbands in front of their children'
Yikes. Ben may wear the trousers both actually and metaphorically, but Kirstie bats aside the suggestion that she’s a ‘surrendered wife’. ‘All I’ve ever wanted was to get married and have children and make a home, so I’m certainly not going to screw it up if I can help it.’ Although not married, she sports a preposterously large sapphire on her finger that, like the Great Wall of China, can probably beseen from outer space. She is quietly confident that wedding bells will chime at some point but, in the meantime, her bid for world domination – one reclaimed fireplace at a time – continues…
There’s her book Kirstie’s Homemade Home, full of design inspiration and step-by-step how-to guides, and a second Channel 4 Homemade series in which, this time, she tackles other people’s dowdy homes. Then there’s Kirstie and Phil’s Perfect Christmas, which will see Phil try out gadgets while Kirstie fiddles with pine cones, a new series of Relocation, Relocation, and a new travel show from Kirstie and Phil’s production company Raise the Roof. Also on the radar is Homes for Heroes, a heartwarming makeover-cum-property show featuring servicemen and women.
And let’s not forget the Kirstie Allsopp bedwear range, from the company that already makes Kylie and Twiggy bed linen. ‘I was investigating sheets for Meadow Gate, a house in Devon that we let out, and when I contacted the company Ashley Wilde,
they immediately said there was a Kirstie-shaped hole in the bedding market, and would I like to fill it? It was as though all my Christmases had come at once! I leapt at the idea, and I’m totally thrilled at the final result.’
Meadow Gate, dedicated Allsopp aficionados will recall, is the name of the house that Kirstie renovated, decorated, and then titivated in her first Homemade series, which saw her assiduously try her hand at glassblowing, running up scatter cushions, making candles and screen-printing her own wallpaper. The culmination is a classic
combination of simplicity and luxury that you can experience by renting the house from £2,000 a week or, given that it’s booked solid for the next three months, save yourself a tidy sum and just watch her new series, in which she will be helping members of the public to stamp their personalities on the places they call home.
‘I’m very fond of Phil, and I’ve stopped hitting him at the request of his sister’
‘People take you at your own estimation of yourself, and your house is a very public estimation,’ she says philosophically. ‘Everything in a home should tell a story. Houses are for living in and being yourself in, and there’s a weird hom*ogeneity about the vogue for neutral walls and utterly bland candlesticks – you walk in and have no idea what sort of person lives there because any sign of character has been
excised. In this series I’m not imposing my taste on others, but trying to give them the confidence to find their own style and be bold enough to incorporate it into the space in which they live.’
Thus, Kirstie will be seen antique-shopping (her verdict: great fun), pewter-making (a marvellous sense of history), wood-turning (hideously scary and potentially mutilating), and generally cajoling, chivvying and challenging timorous householders into leaving their magnolia comfort zone and taking a risk or two with quirky objets and patterns.
Her new catch phrase is ‘upcycling’, which more or less equates to rootling round skips for bits of furniture and then tarting them up – essentially, the sort of insouciant, shameless behaviour that mortifies the middle classes and hence is the
preserve of the truly posh. And Kirstie is the poshest person on television. The daughter of Charles Henry Allsopp, sixth Baron Hindlip and former chairman of Christie’s, she is entitled to be addressed as the Honourable Kirstie Allsopp. She was educated at various schools including Bedales in Hampshire, and worked briefly on magazines such as Country Living before setting up a home-search company specialising in high-end properties. Then came her professional partnership with Phil Spencer, 40, on Location, Location, Location – and their instant alchemy created TV gold from the get-go.
‘I’m very fond of Phil, who is entirely wonderful, and I’ve stopped hitting him quite so often after a special request from his sister. He and I are alike: we are both one of four children, we both have two sons, and I can’t imagine working with anyone else. If I’ve ever lost my temper with him on screen it’s because I’ve been pregnant, when I’m a total nightmare and everything has to revolve round me. That’s partly why I’m holding back from having a baby for now. I’d adore another one but I’m aware it would be purely for me, rather than the family, and if my other pregnancies are anything to go by I’d be bedridden and throwing up and incapable of anything. So I have a responsibility to make sure everyone else is in the right place before I inflict myself on them.
‘I’m a huge fan of Twitter and I’m always getting stuck into discussions about parenting. I love my children with a passion that is almost heartbreaking – once you love like that you’re lost, really…’ She trails off with a rueful mother’s ‘what-an-you-do?’ smile and a shrug. ‘I must be careful not to talk about them too much because that’s selling their little souls to the devil. I once spoke out about Katie Price exploiting her children and, while I don’t regret my opinion, I do wish I hadn’t verbalised it. I’ve been brought up to be discreet, and in my circles you never talk about anyone.’
This would explain why she squirms when I enquire whether she’ll be knitting a gift for Number Ten’s new arrival, Florence. ‘I admire Samantha Cameron hugely and our social lives overlap, but I’m not part of any inner sanctum as claimed in the press, and I haven’t met the baby yet. I could have a go at doing some freestyle embroidery, at a
push, for her – but I wouldn’t ever…’
Talk about it? ‘No. Absolutely not.’ Despite the fact that she’s a Conservative voter, and would make the perfect Tory poster-girl in the House of Lords, Kirstie firmly denies she has any hankering to be a peer. Not least because she would be the loosest of cannons. ‘I am driven by issues, not ideology, and I certainly couldn’t be trusted to toe
the party line. If I were asked to enter the upper chamber I would have to be a working peer, and right now I’m doing the job I love so that’s something for 15 years down the line.’
She pauses for a moment’s reflection, clearly tempted by the campaigning platform. ‘Although, if someone could make 500 days a year and eight days a
week, I’d be happy to join the House of Lords.’ Frankly, if anyone could tinker with the space-time continuum and still manage to sew name tags on her children’s gym kits, it’s Kirstie Allsopp. So get to it please, Kirstie – your country needs you.
Kirstie’s Homemade Home will be published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thursday, price £20. To order a copy for £16.99 with free p&p, contact the YOU Bookshop on 0845 155 0711, you-bookshop.co.uk
The second series of Kirstie’s Homemade Home will be on Channel 4 from 4 November
