KEEPING UP WITH KIRSTIE

She’s made her name as the queen of house buying and homemaking. But Kirstie Allsopp says it all started when she worked at Country Living. To celebrate our 35th birthday, Vicky Carlisle catches up with her former colleague

We meet the former CL team member who’s now a household name in homemaking

Twenty eight years ago, you were making the tea and sorting post at Country Living Magazine. Now you’re a household name. Can we take any credit for that? I was hugely influenced by my Country Living days! So much of what I learnt there, particularly about crafts, has informed what I’ve gone on to do since. I’m looking at this kitchen dresser. Where did I get that Brixton Pottery bowl and mug? At my first CL Fair. I still wear the cardi I bought there, too.

Thanks, we’ll take that. But your mother was an interior decorator and your father a Christie’s auctioneer. Weren’t arts and crafts always in your life? I wasn’t really into either then but it was going on all around me. My mother’s sewing machine was always out in the kitchen, and both she and my father painted watercolours. Most weekends, Christie’s would be doing a house sale and we’d all go along. So, there was lots of fine art in my life.

Was it a country childhood? I grew up in a big Victorian house in Wiltshire. There were ponies, dogs – a Labrador and two Newfoundlands – and a fully furnished treehouse in the garden…

Quite a posh upbringing then? Not especially. My parents did the classic middle-class thing of spending too much on a property and then not being able to afford to run it. Every weekend, my mother would be making cushions or painting furniture, and my father would frantically chop wood for the boiler because that was cheaper than oil. But we children were oblivious to all that. We’d go off on our bicycles, with honey sandwiches and orange squash, and be gone for the day.

So you left the family home aged 20 and started as editorial assistant at Country Living… That was a key period for me, effectively my university. I discovered so many of the crafters who’d crop up in my later career – Nicholas Mosse, Kaffe Fassett, Emma Bridgewater… I couldn’t resist buying their stuff, even though I couldn’t afford it. I remember you helped me pawn my pearls…

Happy days, then? It was a great job, but my stand-out memory was being given a massive dressing-down just after I started. I was told I was the most lazy and hopeless person they’d ever had and the last person as bad as me got fired!

But I remember you being described as a ray of sunshine… I was – but a hopeless ray of sunshine! That ticking-off was good for me. I pulled my socks up – sometimes you need those kind of shocks.

From there, you joined the advertising department. Good memories? It was the best and worst of times. Cold calling was the most miserable job but I learnt so much. When anyone asks how I got so good at negotiating with estate agents, I say, “That was selling ads at the National Magazine Company.”

So we were your segue into property search? Yes, I set up my first search company when I was 25. The Daily Telegraph wrote about it and then a TV production company asked me to screen test for a property show. I’d never been in front of a camera in my life!

Fast-forwarding to 2020: Location, Location, Location celebrates its 20th birthday this year. What keeps you interested? For me, it’s totally about the people. It’s about understanding that when someone says they want to live ten minutes from their mother-in-law, what they actually mean is they’d rather be half an hour away. It’s listening to what people

tell you and interpreting what they mean. There are so many things we never say on the show. Sometimes, when people appear difficult, I long to tell viewers, “Actually, they’ve been through a tough time.” There’s frequently a backstory but we’re not always able to share it.

Buyers often start out with unrealistic expectations. How do you get them to see the potential of an underwhelming property? I can walk into most houses and immediately see how to reconfigure them. It’s a spatial-awareness thing. What I love more than anything else is rearranging things. It’s a bit like playing with a doll’s house.

I remember you ‘rearranging’ my handbag. Are you a bit of a bossy boots?

Sometimes I think they edit the show to make me seem bossier than I am. But I do love organising things. That’s why I adore Love it or List it [see box, opposite]. I get to say: “Your life is chaotic and it’s not working.” Like your handbag. The other day, I found 90 mugs in one family’s kitchen cupboard. I said: “Each pick three and the rest can go.” You cannot be rearranging mugs every time you open a cupboard.

You split your time between your homes in London and Devon. What’s in your own cupboards? Old pieces, mostly. Both Ben [Andersen, Kirstie’s partner] and I were brought up with the idea that we just don’t buy new stuff. Apart from clothes and some crafts, it’s rare I’ll buy anything new.

In Kirstie’s Homemade Home, you encourage viewers to salvage from skips. Are you a serial upcycler? Yes, but if you’re going to buy old things, you need the skills to mend them. I’m very confident now about buying something with a chunk out of it and repairing it.

Does mending and making come easily to you? Nowadays, yes, but it didn’t always. I’m lucky: I’ve been taught so many crafts by so many skilled people. But before we started filming the craft shows, I thought we’d just show other people doing things. When I found out I had to do it, too, my first reaction was: “I can’t. I’m terrible at that kind of thing.” But now I truly believe everyone can learn to craft, despite anything we were told at school.

Even someone like me, with a full-time job and three children? Start with pompoms if you want a simple project. They’re brilliant. And you can do so much with them.

So have you mastered most crafts now? My greatest crafting sadness is that I just cannot get crocheting and knitting – even though I’ve been taught by some of the best people. I think it’s partly… if I say it’s my dyslexia, I’ll be shouted down… but it’s something to do with how my brain communicates with my hands.

You now have your own craft fairs, but did you learn the ropes at ours? I loved the CL Fairs. Lots of the people we feature in our events I first encountered at Country Living. The same names come round all the time.

We notch up our 30th fair next year. What do you remember about our first? The queues to get in! The editor and I went on an apologising offence. It was a freezing March day and she insisted we take our coats off so we’d look cold and people would feel sorry for us. It was one of my biggest lessons in life: do what it takes to get people on side!

So what’s up next for you? Obviously plans are a bit fluid at the moment [due to the coronavirus], but usually my diary is set through to December – filming Location, Love it or List it and all the Christmas shows.

Being Kirstie sounds exhausting. Is it? I try to get away with the family in school holidays. You have to respect the fame thing. When you’ve been appearing in people’s sitting rooms for 20 years, they feel, quite rightly, like they know you. They’ll strike up conversations anywhere. And you don’t want to let them down. So you need times when you go into a supermarket and no one cares a jot about you.

Is Devon your retreat? That’s where we spend most weekends. We have a treehouse – like the one I had as a child – and there’s a tennis court and a river that I swim in. The boys [Orion, Hal, Bay and Oscar] love being outside. I was very free when I was growing up, so I try to be chilled with them.

Do you live the good life? We have a vegetable garden and grow salads and herbs, and make our own apple juice. We have about 12 rescue chickens, so we have our own eggs. I learnt about the importance of food provenance at Country Living – way before others started thinking about sustainability.

Do you cook much? Cooking a tikka masala on Sunday morning while listening to The Archers is my absolute favourite thing. It was only at Country Living that I realised people other than my mother listened to that! I always remember when you received an invitation to Elizabeth and Nigel’s wedding. Everyone was in a tizzy about hats and I wondered at what point you’d realise that Ambridge doesn’t actually exist. But when I was invited to star myself years later – I opened a fête – I cried with joy!

We’re celebrating an anniversary this year. What’s your perfect birthday treat? My birthday’s on 31 August, so I’m always in Devon, by the sea. We take a portable barbecue to the beach and have lunch. I adore eating outside – in all weathers. Oh, and by the way, I’ve still got the bowl Country Living gave me for my 21st birthday…

“I LEARNT ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF FOOD PROVENANCE AT COUNTRY LIVING – WAY BEFORE OTHERS STARTED THINKING ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY”