NO KITCHEN since the Borgias has ever produced anything so toxic.
And yesterday, the tale of Ed Miliband’s two kitchens took a new twist when it was claimed that one of them is reserved for his family’s livein nanny.
A source told The Sunday Telegraph that Mr Miliband was indeed a regular user of the “bland” and “humourless” kitchenette in which he was filmed with his wife Justine by the BBC.
But it is understood that the second, bigger kitchen – which Mr Miliband has admitted does exist – lies beneath in the lower ground floor of their £2million home.
The source said that kitchen was largely used by the Miliband family’s live-in nanny.
Mr Miliband – now being dubbed “Two Kitchens” in reference to Lord Prescott’s “Two Jags” nickname – is now faced with a new dilemma over the kitchen drama.
For ITV is due to begin filming at the house tomorrow for a prime-time half-hour documentary on the Labour leader, to be screened in the run-up to the election.
Mr Miliband has agreed to give programme-makers access to his home and he will now have to decide in which kitchen to allow filming to take place.
ITV has already filmed David Cameron and Nick Clegg in their respective kitchens with their families and will not look kindly if Mr Miliband now denies them access to perhaps the most talked about kitchen in political history.
An ITV source said: “Cameron and Clegg have already been filmed in their kitchens and elsewhere and we are due to begin filming in Ed Miliband’s home in the next day or two. We were always going to shoot in the family kitchen so we shall have to see what happens.”
The Labour party is so concerned by the disclosure that Mr Miliband lives in a house expensive and large enough to accommodate two kitchens that yesterday it refused to discuss the issue.
“We are desperate to shut the door on the kitchen,” said an insider.
It wasn’t clear whether the latest disclosure – that the family enjoys the services of a live-in nanny – will further dent his credentials as the people’s candidate ahead of the election. But it also helps to explain why the house retains two kitchens, both of which were in situ when the property was bought for £1.6million in 2009. In 2013, when Mrs Miliband, a successful barrister said to earn £200,000 a year, remortgaged the house, both her husband and their nanny had to sign a legal document as occupiers. The five-storey house is solely in Mrs Miliband’s name on the Land Registry.
Mr Miliband was filmed with his wife sipping cups of tea for a BBC “soft-focus” interview in which Mrs Miliband complained of the “vicious” personal attacks on her husband.
The images prompted Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove, the Chief Whip, to mock the kitchen’s “bland, functional, humourless” decor. In an attempt to defend the Milibands, a friend tweeted: “Ed Miliband’s kitchen is lovely,” before adding that the room where he was filmed by the BBC was just a “functional kitchenette by the sitting room for tea and quick snacks”.