Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
SULTANS OF BLING
TV’S golden couple back for a third series on the super-rich
cars you can have, what size of a house do you need?” “[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. 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 with: “Can I continue with the rest of my list? “I’d also have a private plane or helicopter and or both, because I am done with airports. “I’m addicted. I now go into an airport and go, ‘Oh, can we not go private? 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 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. 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. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t like somebody to say ‘There’s dinner, it’s all cooked and the house is clean’. “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.” Ruth revealed her most fascinating discovery is retirement is a dirty word to most of the people on the show. She said: “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 we asked, ‘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. “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.”
It shows what your indulgent side would be if you had wealth EAMONN HOLMES ON HIT CHANNEL 5 SERIES