Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Caviar and solid gold suits... Now that’s rich!
Fancy a bit of jaw-dropping escapism? Let Sally Lindsay provide it when she stops for a sleepover with some very wealthy people in a new series...
How rich do you have to be to own a second home in Mayfair? Perhaps you have to be the sort of person who doesn’t baulk at spending £20,000 on a set of Lalique bathroom taps, says actress and presenter Sally Lindsay. Sally is not that person.
‘£10K on each tap!’ she shrieks. ‘Who needs to spend that on taps? I thought, “We’re in another world here.” We’re reading about children getting carrots in boxes as a free school lunch, and there are people spending this much on taps.’
Taps are only the start of it though. ‘The thing I couldn’t get over was that the lift cost £1 million. A lift! It was all glass. The bed I slept in was from Hermes. I had a Hermes scarf once, and I thought that was posh.’
To be fair, the house in question needs a lift, being what’s known as an ‘iceberg’ home because there’s more of it underground than above. Once this was a runof-the-mill Mayfair mansion, now three stories have been added underground to house a bar, a spa and a swimming pool. The owner, property developer Kam, and his girlfriend Anya live in another £30 million house nearby, but use the second property to put upguests.as you do.
Sally got the place to herself when she popped along as a house guest to film a new three-part series for Channel 5 called Sally Lindsay’s Posh Sleepover. It’s perfect casting. Born in Stockport, Sally isn’t averse to a bit of posh in her own life (she’s married to former Style Council drummer Steve White, honeymooned at The Dorchester and owns a production company) but is resolutely down-toearth. There’s another thing that qualifies her to present a show like this. ‘I’m a nosy cow, and we all like to see how other people live, don’t we?’ In the Mayfair episode she gets to tag along when Kam and Anya pop out to their local caviar house. Her unposh roots are very much on display as she learns the etiquette involved (eating off the back of your hand is normally frowned upon, but not when it comes to caviar). ‘I’m clumsy so I was afraid of making a mess,’ she admits.
She wasn’t a fan of the taste, or the price – up to £8,000 a kilo. ‘For a starter?’ she gasps in the show. ‘Kam made me roar though,’ she says afterwards. ‘He came here from Iran but grew up at boarding school in Grimsby, so he has his caviar with Warburtons white bread. I loved that.’ Then she goes shopping with Kam as he tries on outfits for a charity event. Sally is too scared to touch a 24-carat gold suit (the buttons are solid gold and the thread in the suit is gold), given it costs £45,000.
It’s a jaw-dropping series all round. The three homes Sally visits are very different. In Surrey she spends the night at a £10 million Hollywood-style megamansion owned by venture capitalist Pete. The youngest of seven and originally from Preston, he now boasts a home with 13 bathrooms and a £200,000 cinema room. In rural Devon she’s the guest of the Hon Alexander Clifford at his stately home, Ugbrooke, which has been the seat of the Clifford family for more than 400 years. No caviar here, but she tries clay pigeon shooting and dresses up in some ancestral armour.
Presenting isn’t the only string to Sally’s bow. As part of the famous St Winifred’s school choir, she had a No 1 hit with There’s No One Quite Like Grandma aged just seven, then studied English at Hull university but was diverted into drama after appearing in an amateur play. A long-running role in Coronation Street, where she played barmaid Shelley, is perhaps what she’s best known for, but since then she’s combined acting with presenting.
That started with a stint on Loose Women. ‘I thought they’d asked me in to interview as a guest, not a presenter,’ she laughs. Her funny, easy manner made her a hit – and a hoot.
Meanwhile, she’s been homeschooling her ten-year-old twin sons Vic and Louie. ‘I can never completely relax. There’s always the risk they’ll start scrapping and I’ll be on a Zoom call thinking, “They’re going to kill each other.”’ Perhaps she needs a bigger house? ‘In my dreams,’ she says. ■
Sally Lindsay’s Posh Sleepover, tonight, 7pm, Channel 5.