Spring break for Lorraine’s house sale

There’s a spring in Lorraine Keane’s step. Or hopefully there will be. The one-time TV3 star turned fashion deity told me that she will give her renovated Monkstown mansion — which was put up for sale at €2.65m in March — until next spring to shift or she will take it off the market.

“There is a lot of uncertainty with Brexit,” she said when I met her in the Intercontinental hotel last week.

“Personally I don’t think anything will happen until springtime. We are in no rush. We’ve had a few offers but not what we are asking. If we don’t sell in spring we will just stay put for a few more years. We love it,” she said of the Belgrave Square house she bought 16 years ago, when it was divided into eight flats.

“It’s just too big for us four,” she added, meaning herself, husband Peter Devlin and their two children, Emelia and Romy.

“We have four floors but we only live on two really. I have my eye on a smaller house in the area. I’d love a new project. It’s a doerupper.”

Lorraine Keane, on the other hand, is a doer. The day I met her in the Intercontinental, the ex-Xpose mainstay was in meetings about the exclusive Festive Afternoon Tea in aid of Fashion Relief with Oxfam Ireland that she is hosting at the aforesaid swish five-star Ballsbridge hotel on December 19.

Tickets, which cost €65, include afternoon tea, Brimoncourt Champagne, table gifts and live entertainment.

The auction prizes include a stay in a penthouse in Fitzpatricks hotel in New York with a Champagne tour of Don O’Neill’s design studio “where you can chose one of his fabulous dresses. Very Carrie Bradshaw!”

Before then, Lorraine is travelling to Bangladesh with Oxfam Ireland on November 29 to “show where the money — we raised €175,000 so far this year — is being spent”.