EAMONN AND RUTH: WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE IT’S VERY HARD TO HAVE REAL FRIENDS
Northern Ireland’s Eamonn Holmes and wife Ruth Langsford are one of TV’s most down-to-earth couples, but that’s not to say they don’t enjoy the taste of the high life once in a while. With a third series of How The Other Half Lives under way, the couple t
Eamonn Holmes has just ordered Ruth Langsford out of the room. If this was the result of a spat, things could get awkward now. But it’s far from it. Rather he’s simply excited to share what he’s bought his wife for their forthcoming seventh wedding anniversary.
“Oh God, you haven’t done something extravagant again, have you?” she quips, closing the door behind her.
“As you can see, I’m the romantic one,” retorts Eamonn.
“Ruth’s answer is: ‘You better not have done anything’. But if I haven’t done anything, believe me.
“What I have done is got her a recreation of her wedding bouquet, which was a drape over her arm, so I will get the same flowers, which are white roses, in a bouquet. Not that she’ll even remember what she had.”
Having just clocked off from their regular Friday hosting slot on ITV’s This Morning, the bickering duo — Ruth now complaining about the chilly climes of her husband’s dressing room and Eamonn groaning that she’s taking too long talking fashion — are on top form and, refreshingly, exactly as they appear on screen.
It’s this viewer relatability that has secured the twosome a number of joint TV projects, including the much-loved Channel 5 documentary series How The Other Half Lives.
Some of the wealth is wealth beyond your wildest dreams — it’s so unattainable that it almost becomes comical
Back for a third run, the couple will once again take viewers on a gasp-worthy journey into the lives of the world’s super-rich, from staying in multimillion-pound mansions to driving the most expensive cars and rubbing shoulders at exclusive, billionaire-filled parties.
And past experiences taken into account, it’s an existence the down-toearth pair, both 57, still find hard to comprehend.
“It’s still gobsmacking,” begins Ruth, back on the sofa and looking glamorous in a green wrap dress.
“Some of the wealth is wealth beyond your wildest dreams — it’s so unattainable that it almost becomes comical.
“We all love to think: ‘If I won the Lottery I’ll do this and I’ll pay off my sister’s mortgage and I’ll have a nice car’. But these are billionaires and they’re multi-billionaires,” she enthuses.
“And interestingly we were expecting not to like a lot of people, and it’s been the complete opposite.
“People have been so nice and we’re not here to judge people, to be disrespectful, to sneer or to laugh at them.”
It is, however, a process that’s left Eamonn with food for thought.
“Just to say, Ruthie and I never come home from one of these trips and say ‘oh, I wish we had this, I wish we had that’, because, as Ruth always says to me: ‘There’s only so many cars you can have, what size of a house do you need?’” chimes the former Sky News anchor.
“But I definitely have a shopping list — I’m only human.
“And the top of my list if I could do it, I think, would be a cook,” he announces proudly. “I would like a chef.”
“Hello? How insulting!” Ruth pipes up, turning to face him.
“See, that is the typical reaction you get,” he says with a chuckle. “It would be for my wife and myself; I would like to wake up, come down in my dressing gown and have someone say to me: ‘Mr Holmes, would you like some crushed avocado on toast, a poached egg perhaps?’ And I would say ‘That would be very nice’.
“To have a live-in chef would be top,” he repeats, before testing the waters
One of the things that I have found fascinating doing this is that retirement is a dirty word to most of the people on the show
with: “Can I continue with the rest of my list?”
“I’d also have a private plane or helicopter and or both, because I’m done with airports,” he resumes, referring to himself as “unashamedly bling”.
“I’m addicted. I now go into an airport and go: ‘Oh, can we not go private?’” adds Eamonn, who regularly commutes back home to Belfast.
“It’s not just first-class, it’s private. That has been the most thrilling experience for me.”
While Ruth agrees on his preferred form of travel (“It was the most unbelievably wonderful experience”), she is averse to Eamonn’s request for full-time staff.
“I wouldn’t like the lack of privacy,” confides the Loose Women star. Because in so many homes we went to, there were times when I felt like I was in a hotel, there were so many staff milling about.
“I like to shut the door,” she declares. “We have help: I have a cleaner and we’ve had a nanny for Jack over the years (the couple’s son, who is now 15), but my home is my home, it’s not a business to me.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t like somebody to say: ‘There’s dinner, it’s all cooked and the house is clean’,” she explains. “But then I’d like to say: ‘Thank you very much, bye.’”
“That’s because you’re very ordinary, darling,” responds Eamonn. “You’re a very ordinary person.
“Whereas I would say: ‘Who is going to do the dishes?’ I think staff is the most amazing thing. I think you’re really rich if you’ve got staff.” But while wishlists are one thing the Surrey-based couple can get on board with, the politics that comes with socialising in such circles certainly isn’t.
“We mix in a world where it’s very hard to get real friends or close friends for a number of reasons,” confesses Eamonn.
“I do know a lot of people in our business who suck up to other people who are wealthier or have patronage, just to go on holiday with them,” he elaborates.
“Now, we’ve been asked to attend things, but we would never just socialise with billionaires because we were invited.
“It would be quite the reverse with us, because we’re very honest, as in: ‘Are you really my friend?’
“I look at Ruth and I think: ‘Why would you do that? Do you need a free holiday that much?’ But you know, whatever. Maybe we’re just not very sociable.”
“One of the things I found fascinating is that retirement is a dirty word to most of the people (on the show),” muses Ruth. “And before we did this series, I would have said: ‘If I win the EuroMillions, you wouldn’t see me for dust, that would be it. I would be gone, I would be retired, I wouldn’t be on TV anymore, I wouldn’t need to do this’.
“But actually I feel very differently now, because so many people that we asked — we always ask ‘you’re worth so much money, why don’t you put your feet up? — say: ‘God, how boring. You might as well just give up and die!’”
“In short, it teaches you a lot about yourself,” Eamonn pitches in.
“Ruth says she learns lessons about what would motivate her, what would keep her going and I absolutely agree with that. It shows you what your indulgent side would be if you had the wealth.
“But we’re very happy how we live,” he finishes.
“What we’ve learned is if you don’t have your health, whether you’re us or whether you’re them, whoever you are, you have no wealth at all and that’s basically that.”
How The Other Half Lives airs on Channel 5, Mondays, 9pm