Jamie: I spent too much & went bust Olly’s £8m lolly
OLLY Murs has gone from Troublemaker to big Moneymaker – raking in £8.3million in four years.
The TV favourite, who claims he pays himself a modest salary, pocketed the fortune from a string of number one albums, top-selling singles and money-spinning tours.
Former X Factor runner-up and telly host Olly, 33, set up a firm called Icydk Ltd to handle cash.
While accounts lodged with Companies House for 2013 showed he had a bottom line of around £500,000 – last year’s reveal his firm now has funds of £6.3million, with £3.6million of that in cash and the rest in assets and investments.
And, to add to that, a previous company owned by Olly, Stanley Entertainments Ltd, showed he paid himself £2million over two years before it was dissolved in 2015.
A source said: “Olly is one of the hardest working stars in the business and also one of the nicest blokes in showbiz too. There won’t be too many people who begrudge him a penny of the money he is making.”
He rose to fame after being runner-up in the 2009 and has had three number albums and four top-spot singles in the UK charts.
Romance
The singer seems to be making gains in his love life too. It was revealed last week he’s been seeing TV host and fitness fanatic Melanie Sykes and they’ve gone to great lengths to keep their blossoming romance under wraps.
Model and mum-of-two Mel, 47, shot to fame in the 1990s Boddington’s beer ads. She too has her own firm – Sykes Appeal Ltd – to handle her media work earnings. But accounts at Companies House this month show her income is a bit more modest than Olly’s, with a bottom line of £86,366 for the year ending January 2017.
The pair have enjoyed a string of hush-hush dates after bonding over their mutual love of keeping fit. Olly has not been in a serious relationship since splitting from long-term girlfriend Francesca Thomas in 2015.
He later admitted he was heartbroken and blamed his “addiction” to work. Mel broke up from second hubby Jack Cockings, a roofer 16 years her junior, in 2014. TELLY chef Jamie Oliver went bankrupt for three weeks – after blowing all the cash from his first cook book.
The 42-year-old – now estimated to be worth £150million – admitted: “I made a couple of quid from nowhere given to me by the public for buying my first book and I spent all of it and more.
“I was bankrupt for three weeks but no one knows that.”
He added: “The minute I started to make any money, I’ve never squirrelled cash away.”
Earlier this year Jamie’s business was forced to close six of his Italian restaurants. And the firm is now offloading debt as it battles to turn around the chain’s £9.9million loss last year.
But Jamie, who found fame with his Naked Chef cookery shows, is still raking in the cash from broadcasting and his recipe books.
His combined wealth with wife Jools, also 42, is £240million.
He denies he is retiring, but said in an interview he wants to spend more time with his five kids – Poppy, 15, Daisy, 14, Petal, eight, Buddy, seven, and River, one.
He added Buddy has dyslexia like him. “My son was just told he is dyslexic. He has done all the tests and stuff and you try to get him into a school as parents do and you are like, ‘Does this matter? Do you still include or support these kind of kids? He is not going to get in?
“If you tune into dyslexia it is a gift. You have to tune into it. I have met over the years so many kids that are depressed, on the edge of tears, they feel like a piece of s***.
“And it is a bunch of things that make them feel like that. It’s funny in a way as when I was having the same things that make them feel like that happen to me I was flourishing as an eight, nine, 10, 11 or 12-year-old in the weekend in the kitchen.
“I knew I could so something. I started cooking when I was about eight and I lived above the pub restaurant and dad still runs it now.”
Jamie first shot to fame in 1999 in TV show The Naked Chef, but he reckons social media is the next big thing.
“Social media now is genius...it is a new beginning. Broadcasters are often four years behind where the public are at,” he said.