TV builder sues Daisy over ‘unpaid bill’ in £1.5m home revamp
A CELEBRITY builder has accused model Daisy Lowe of using lawyers’ bills to scare him off from suing her after she failed to pay for a revamp of her £1.5million London home.
Phil Turner, best known for BBC show House Invaders, says Daisy, 33, still owes his company £45,000 after a £118,000 makeover of her Victorian terraced house.
Daisy, daughter of Gavin Rossdale, the singer in rock band Bush, says she did not pay because Mr Turner’s work – which included a £30,000 kitchen – was not up to standard.
But the TV DIY star insists Daisy “couldn’t afford” to pay – and has accused her of using the threat of a £37,000 lawyers’ bill to stop his claim. And last week, he claimed before a judge that her demand that he prove his company can pay her lawyers’ bills if he loses the case is a tactic designed to try to “stifle” his claim.
A friend of model Katie Price, Mr Turner found fame as “Builder of the Week” on the Big Breakfast and starred as the sidekick to Anna Ryder Richardson on House Invaders.
Daisy, who began modelling aged two and recently posed topless for Esquire, had been friends with the builder before work began in Camden and even attended his wedding.
In the hearing at the Mayor’s and City County Court last week, he said, through his firm TWP Interiors Ltd, he agreed with Daisy to manage work on her three-bed home.
The work included digging foundations and building an extension, as well as a classy refurbishment of the interior of the house, which sold for £1.8million this year.
But the builder says despite almost all the work being done, she failed to pay all of her invoices, leaving him with bills for suppliers and contractors. He said: “She hasn’t paid for anything from the ground up. She couldn’t afford the projects she wanted.”
In court Daisy pushed a bid for “security for costs,” an order by which the company would have to pay money into court to cover her lawyers’ bills if she wins.
A judge hearing an application in the case in May last year had refused her application, but her barrister Alexander Hill-Smith argued in an appeal last week that had been wrong.
He said Daisy could end up having to pay out over £60,000 to defend the builder’s claim, and asked for an order making TWP pay £37,000 to the court up front in case she wins.
But Mr Turner told Judge Stephen Hellman there is no way his company could pay such a sum.
Judge Hellman ruled the previous judge had been wrong to refuse Daisy’s application without hearing evidence about the financial situation of the builder and his company.
If the court decides TWP must pay into court but it fails to, his claim can be struck out. Such orders are not normally made if it is considered they are unaffordable and would stifle a claim. The next hearing is in January.