Moving to a new home? Get the dog to check it over for ghosts
Never mind the surveyor’s report or the agent’s flimflam. All you need to know when you’re moving into a new place is whether it is haunted.
estate agents ought to be legally required to inform you if a previous occupant was stabbed to death in the kitchen, spontaneously combusted in front of the telly or simply disappeared shortly before that patio was laid.
But builder rod wasn’t exactly reassuring when he showed his future wife Clarice around the house he planned to renovate for them in the Cotswolds — featured in Extraordinary Extensions (C4).
The three terraced cottages, built for 17th century labourers and their families, had been derelict for a decade. ‘It’s a bit creepy and you can kind of imagine a murder might have happened there,’ rod told her, ‘but try to see past that.’
Clarice wouldn’t be convinced, though, until she’d brought her dogs to sniff round the property. If they started shivering or whining, she warned, rod’s dream was off.
This seemed less than foolproof. What if the cottages are haunted by dog-loving spooks?
But rod and Clarice had bigger problems to worry about, such as the local planning committee’s stipulation that their L-shaped extension had to be 16ft high to match the existing roofline: the bedroom ended up like a country chapel. The couple tried painting the upper walls dark green to disguise the looming void above, I bet it doesn’t half echo if they snore.
This is presenter Tinie Tempah’s first property show and he’s making a confident job of it. The rapper is an enthusiastic amateur architect. In fact, that enthusiasm is too much for some.
NHS surgeon Humza and his wife Pari, a banker, were embarrassed by the way he raved over the improvements to the back of their 1930s semi in essex. Humza said he was ‘too generous’ with his praise. ‘I’m not, man,’ urged Tinie. ‘Take it and internalise it.’
I’m not sure whether you need planning permission or therapy for ‘internalising’. It sounds painful either way. Perhaps the star, who’s had more No 1 singles than any other British rap artist, has internalised too much praise himself: the credits bill him as plain ‘Tinie’.
Wind your ego in, old chap. You’re not Madonna!
To inspect a truly sensational renovation job, Britain’s Scenic Railways (More4) stopped at the Forth Bridge, where the work never stops. A lighthouse on Inchgarvie Island, under the bridge, is so dilapidated that workmen can’t even stand on its rusting balcony. But the most daunting repairs are taking place high above, where engineers abseil from the girders. ‘Obviously,’ said one maintenance man, ‘if you’ve got vertigo, this might not be your gig.’
At least he had a safety harness. Old newsreel showed workers in the 1930s astride the swooping stanchions with no more protective gear than a cloth cap. ‘Hope I don’t slip!’ shouted one.
They had spectacular vistas, but so did we in this hour. All the segments were picked for their breathtaking backdrops.
A fireman called Tom on the footplate of a steam loco at the Lakeside & Haverthwaite railway in Cumbria was preparing to take his driver’s assessment. It must be difficult to keep your eyes on the track when the test route runs through the fells around Windermere.
And a helicopter took a longdistance look, using an ultrazoom lens, into an osprey’s nest perched on top of a Scottish electricity pylon. ‘You’re going to get a cracking view,’ one engineer promised us at the start of the programme — he wasn’t wrong about that.
WEIRD SET OF THE WEEK: Shooting has started on series two of Sir Terry Pratchett’s marvellous Good Omens. Writer Neil Gaiman, running the show, says: ‘It does feel like we are still all walking around inside Terry’s head.’ A very strange place that would be.