My home comforts away from the sofa; GMTV’s Lorraine Kelly is selling her [pounds sterling]750,000 bolthole by the river
0 Comments | Mail on Sunday (London, England), The, June 20, 2010
Byline: Maggie Mallon
Lorraine Kelly makes interviews on her TV sofa every m o r n i n g look easy, but a fast mind is at work with her careful reassurances and compliments.
So it’s not surprising that the 50-year-old is just as adept at making the key personal decisions. When it comes to property she relies on her sharp intuition – and it’s never let her down, from buying a cottage in rural Berkshire to a six-bedroom family home in Perthshire, and most recently a home in Dundee.
‘You can tell straight away if a house is a happy one,’ says Lorraine. She claims it was ‘love at first sight’ with Easter Bendochy House, a striking modern home deep in the Perthshire countryside with a stunning roof garden and balcony overlooking the River Isla and the Sidlaw Hills.
Now she is selling the Scottish home that has, for the past five years, been her retreat from the hurly-burly of London’s glitzy media world. ‘I can feel the stress oozing out of my body when I’m standing on the balcony, looking out over the river and the hills. It’s so tranquil.’
Lorraine and her husband of 18 years, Steve Smith, have lived there with daughter Rosie, 16, for five years, but are now considering offers over [pounds sterling]750,000, after buying a [pounds sterling]550,000 modern four-bedroom house in Broughty Ferry, a picturepostcard seaside village near Dundee, where Rosie goes to school.
‘We have loved living at Easter Bendochy House but we were turning into a taxi service for Rosie,’ says Steve, a 50-year-old television cameraman. Easter Bendochy is in Bendochy, near Blairgowrie, 16 miles from Dundee – ideal for a weekly commute from Dundee Airport to London’s City Airport, but too far away from Rosie’s friends.
‘I can be in London within two hours,’ says Lorraine. ‘It used to take me longer to drive to the studio when we lived only 26 miles away in Berkshire because of the traffic.’
The couple met when Lorraine was the Scottish reporter for TV-am between 1984 and 1989 and Steve was the cameraman.
When Lorraine was given the presenting job in London from 1989 until 1993, until TV-am folded, she commuted between Steve’s home town of Dundee and London. But when she landed her job at GMTV they decided to move to Berkshire.
‘I wanted to be nearer to work and we had just married in 1992 and wanted to start a family so we thought it would be a good idea to move down South,’ says Lorraine.
In 1993 they bought an 18th Century cottage in Cookham Dean, Berkshire, for [pounds sterling]270,000, which they sold five years ago for [pounds sterling]700,000.
‘It was lovely – with low-beamed ceilings and an Aga. But we’d always wanted to come back home and, with Rosie about to start secondary school, it seemed like the right time,’ says Lorraine.
They bought Easter Bendochy for [pounds sterling]700,000 and spent [pounds sterling]100,000 putting in a home cinema and converting a barn into a studio where Steve paints portraits as a hobby, and a home office for Lorraine.
They bought the house from a local builder, who had built it for himself in 1996.
‘I love it because it’s so unusual – it’s modern but has been built with some traditional materials. It has all the advantages of a modern house but it’s not just a box,’ says Lorraine.
The house is built of stone under pitched slate roofs and is centred on a split-level semi-circular hallway. Above this is a minstrel’s gallery.
A sitting room opens out on to a semi-circular roof garden and large balcony with views over the rolling Strathmore countryside. ‘I get the best of both worlds,’ says Lorraine. ‘I love London – it’s fabulous. Then, when I get home I enjoy being in the countryside and in Dundee, which has undergone a real renaissance.’
Lorraine’s down-to-earth style has made her one of Britain’s best-loved TV presenters, but she dislikes the idea of being a ‘celebrity’. ‘I don’t buy into the celebrity life – I’m too busy getting on with life.
‘People do come up to say hello and that’s nice. I’ve been in their living rooms for years and the familiarity makes people think they know me.
‘I’m very lucky because I enjoy what I do. I meet some extraordinary people. George Clooney was good fun – just a nice bloke. Will Smith was the same – gorgeous and charming. But Harri son Ford just didn’t want to be there… which is a shame.
‘The trickiest people to interview aren’t the A-list Hollywood stars or slippery politicians but the 17-year-old who has landed a part in Emmerdale and is sick with nerves. I always talk to people before they go on to make sure they are OK.’
When Lorraine isn’t working she likes to walk through the fields around her house in Perthshire with her border terrier Rocky. She is petite and slim thanks to regular runs with Steve – she calls herself a ‘fun runner’ despite having run four marathons, the latest earlier this year in London.
‘We were overtaken by Darth Vader, Elvis Presley and a giraffe,’ she said with her easy laugh
sell house fast