Saving our zoo has cost me my marriage
For TV star Anna Ryder Richardson, it was a wild adventure. Now, divorcing and quitting Britain, she reveals the true tragic toll
THERE was a time when Anna Ryder Richardson loved nothing more than pulling on her wellies and stomping through the muddy grounds of her very own zoo. With wild hair and scruffy clothes, she delighted in the company of her exotic animals, a collection including llamas, zebras, meerkats, three white rhinos and – her pride and joy – two rare Sumatran tigers.
It was all, she says, ‘the best therapy’ and it delighted viewers of Channel 4’s Chaos At The Zoo, as it charted the ups and downs of Anna, her family and their wildlife adventure.
Yet today, for all the pleasure of her time at Manor House Wildlife Park in Pembrokeshire, the presenter is in a sombre mood. For Anna, 53, is preparing to leave the zoo and animals for good, exchanging them for a dilapidated farmhouse in France.
She is divorcing her Scots husband Colin MacDougall, the father of her daughters Bibi and Dixie. And she’s in no doubt at all about what caused the collapse of her 16-year relationship.
‘The stresses and strains and expense of running our wildlife park have destroyed our marriage,’ she declares. ‘I’m moving lock, stock and barrel to France, and I’m getting divorced.
‘I still well up thinking about all the beautiful Welsh countryside and the nature. I had the best of times there, but they became the hardest of times. We had so much work to do we never saw each other. I’m having to start all over again with nothing and it’s scary. I’m older and wiser, but I’ve lost a bit of confidence. I’m wrinkled and I’ve lost a lot of weight. I woke up one morning and thought, “Here I am, broke, middle-aged, sad and now single.” We were a privileged couple who had it all, but somehow it all got lost.’
It is a decade since Anna first started renovating the zoo near Tenby, after buying it on a whim and, as it would turn out, putting their lives through hell. Indeed, the couple would soon find themselves spending four freezing years in a prefab cabin while their colourful collection of rare beasts luxuriated in centrally heated homes. It could hardly have been further from the days when Anna was the flamboyant queen of television makeover shows, drawing audiences of up to 14million as, in the company of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, she transformed suburban houses on the hit BBC series Changing Rooms.
Today, speaking for the first time about the disintegration of her marriage, Anna is finally ready to admit it was a naive decision to buy the wildlife park – and one they took against Colin’s better judgment. As a presenter and interior designer, she had enjoyed a thriving career, as did Colin, who ran two successful restaurants in Glasgow.
The couple met at a Millennium party and spent several years in the city. They bought the former SFA headquarters in Park Gardens and transformed the A-listed property into a five-bed luxury home.
Their happiness was complete when they had Bibi in 2003 and Dixie the following year. They surprised friends by marrying in secret in 2005.
Since her childhood in Surrey, Anna had longed to live in the countryside, and when she heard talk of a wildlife park for sale in Wales, she was certain it was something she had to do – despite the obvious risks.
Set in 52 acres of stunning countryside, the zoo was the ultimate labour of love. When Anna and Colin bought it for £1million in 2008, every aspect of it was rundown and hazardous, from the dangerous rides to the inadequate facilities for the animals.
They closed it to the public and spent seven months on a complete renovation, with Anna pouring a further £1 million of her money into new enclosures and other work.
Yes, it all seemed a slightly mad- cap endeavour, but it was hoped that just like the Hollywood film We Bought A Zoo, it would turn into the feelgood adventure she longed for. ‘In the early days, I was blissfully happy, with our children growing up among the African animals I always dreamed of as a girl,’ she says. Reality soon bit, however, not least when the couple learned just how much work was needed to make the £600,000 a year they needed to stay in business. ‘We were
We were a privileged couple who had it all but it all got lost
like ships in the night, trying to get everything done, and we started rowing. Inevitably it took its toll.’
If it was Anna who had the drive and vision, it was her husband’s business brain that had actually made the venture possible.
‘I began to realise I was useless with money, business plans and things like that,’ she says. ‘All the technical things went over my head. Eventually Colin banned me from all the meetings. Stupidly, I was resentful, but looking back, there was one meeting I was in one day and I looked up and caught Colin looking at me in disgust – I was sitting there filing my nails!’
They found themselves making uncomfortable choices, including a four-year stint living in a flat-pack wooden cabin in the zoo’s grounds while the park’s Edwardian manor house was turned into a visitor centre. ‘It cost us more than £300,000 to build a state-of-the-art rhino house, yet we were freezing to death in a log cabin 50ft long by 20ft wide,’ Anna recalls. ‘The animals had a warmer, better home than us. Even I, the passionate interior designer, can see the irony in that. But our arguments weren’t about our basic living conditions. We argued about whether our rhinos and gibbons were warm enough and even turned our heating off to save money.’
As a household name, the obvious way for Anna to raise money was to appear on TV and in lucrative glossy magazine shoots – although Colin refused to participate in the latter.
‘The first shoot we did like that, someone persuaded him to put a dressing gown on over his jeans and when it came out, all his tough Scottish mates took the mickey out of him. When Bibi came along they’d wanted to do another one with all the family but he had dignity, he refused.’
The family’s move was filmed for Chaos At The Zoo, and they also appeared in a show for Welsh ITV called Anna’s Welsh Zoo. She now recognises that as much as the money it brought was needed, this attention contributed to their marital woes. ‘We became like one of the specimens in the zoo, with everybody coming to peer at us,’ Anna says. ‘Colin didn’t like it. I didn’t like it either, really, because we were on show all the time. One day I was sitting in my little garden and I heard some picnickers on the other side of the fence talking about Anna Ryder Richardson.
‘It was really beginning to affect me mentally. It was getting to us that our lives weren’t private and our two daughters had to put up with being known from a young age, and that isn’t always good.
‘One day TV cameras were there filming and they caught me calling out to Colin by my private, loveydovey nickname to him, Bear, and people on TV saw it and took the mickey out of us for that, too.’
Gradually the couple succeeded in creating a popular attraction focusing on conservation, Anna’s passion. But then came the terrible day in August 2010, on which an apparently healthy tree in the park suddenly fell, causing serious injuries to three-year-old visitor Gruff Davies-Hughes and his mother. Anna and Colin faced more than £100,000 in fines and costs.
‘To this day I can’t talk about what happened, it’s too painful,’ says Anna. ‘What happened to those poor people will never leave me.’
The case against Anna was thrown out after Colin took the blame and pleaded guilty. ‘Once again, Colin protected me,’ she says.
The zoo recovered eventually in terms of takings, but she now wonders if it was the beginning of the end of their marriage, saying: ‘I don’t think things were really ever the same between us after it.’
Five years ago, the family bought another property nearby, a farmhouse set in 14 acres of land near the wildlife park, and renovated it to turn it into Anna’s perfect home. Even so, the couple began to realise their marriage was over.
‘The daily drudgery of practical chores had us bickering and rowing. There wasn’t really time for us any more because so much had to be done each day,’ she says. ‘Then came the sad realisation that even though we are still friends, the marriage wasn’t working any more. We love each other, but we are not in love. It hurts.’
It’s a sad ending to a story which captivated those who admired the energy and spirit Anna brought to Changing Rooms and other programmes. ‘Looking back, I can see Colin was a brilliant husband to me,’ she continues. ‘I’m very impulsive and he indulged my whims and protected me. He gave in to me about the zoo, even though he didn’t want to initially. He was right.’
As sad as Anna feels, however, she is also determined not to look back with regret. ‘The good thing is I have learned a lot through this rotten experience. I’m not the same woman as when we took on the park. I’m no longer as hard as when I was a younger, pushy presenter. I’ve discovered I have a passion for things like cooking and gardening, which I’m looking forward to doing in France.’
With her remaining money, she has bought what she describes as ‘an absolute ruin’ in six acres of land near Bordeaux. She is learning French and intends to live in the farmhouse full-time with her daughters. She says she still loves the zoo and will leave it with a heavy heart. ‘The rhino weighs two tons but I scratch him hard on his underbelly and he lifts his leg up so I can do it more,’ she says, smiling. ‘But Colin will continue to manage it.’
Anna is back on television next week, rebuilding her career as she co-presents 60 Minute Makeover with Peter Andre on TV channel Quest Red, in which she’ll improve the homes of people suffering through difficult times such as illness or emotional problems.
‘Obviously I’m not the sexy young bird on telly any more,’ she says. ‘But I don’t give up. I’m devastated, but I’m about to pick myself up, reinvent myself and go into an exciting new phase.’
Our rhinos had a £300,000 home while we froze in a cabin We love each other but we are not in love. It hurts