Has he got designs on a new start? Kevin McCloud leaves wife of 23 years
AS the face of Grand Designs, he has inspired the nation to build their dream property.
But now Channel 4 star Kevin McCloud has left his wife of 23 years distraught – after allegedly walking out of their marital home.
Interior designer Suzanna McCloud, known as Zani, has a son and daughter with the 60-year-old presenter.
One of her friends claimed to the Daily Mail: ‘Zani is absolutely devastated. She came back home one day to find that Kevin had taken his things and left.’
And a spokesman for McCloud said last night: ‘I can confirm that, sadly, Kevin and Suzanna separated. We won’t be making any further comment.’
His spokesman declined to say if any third parties were involved.
McCloud, who also has a son and daughter from a previous relationship, has spent the past 20 years charting the highs and lows of building your own home.
He shared a 500-year-old farmhouse with Suzanna near Bruton in Somerset. They sold their previous Grade II-listed home in 2010 to Fifty Shades Of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson for £1.85million.
McCloud studied art and architecture at Cambridge University, where he was a member of the Footlights comedy revue, alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. He has previously spoken about being a difficult person to live with. ‘I’m terribly fastidious,’ he said. ‘I like symmetry and neatness, but my house is as chaotic as any other family’s.’
Before starting at university, he trained as an opera singer in Italy. After graduating from Cambridge, he trained as a theatre designer before setting up his own lighting design practice – and at one point, his company employed 26 people.
His first TV presenting appearance was a 1998 guest stint on BBC2 makeover show Home Front In The Garden.
The news of the marriage break-up comes just weeks after it was disclosed that McCloud’s property firms face liquidation. People who put cash into two businesses started by him face losing almost their entire investment.
HAB Land Finance, named after McCloud’s Happiness Architecture Beauty brand, raised £2.4million from 280 people. But investors could be almost wiped out after the firm and its owner, HAB Land – which was set up to buy sites for housing estates in Oxford and Winchester
– called in liquidators. McCloud had advertised 8 per cent returns.
However, according to KPMG, which has been appointed to liquidate the two companies, the firms were hurt by a period of ‘difficult trading’.
McCloud told potential investors in 2017 that his company was delivering ‘triple bottom line returns with progress on energy positivity’. Those potential investors were pitched so- called ‘minibonds’ with 8 per cent returns to crowdfund the projects in Oxford and Winchester. Almost 300 people put their money in to lend HAB Land Finance £2.4million to build the estates. But they have not seen a return on that investment.