£175m for a flat? It’s like taking Candy from a baby

BRITAIN’S most expensive flat is on sale for £175 million. Overlooking Harrods in Central London, the 18,000 sq ft duplex penthouse at One Hyde Park has a private spa, cinema, cocktail bar and five ‘luxury’ bedrooms. How on earth can they justify the price? It has to be a joke. It is owned by Nick Candy, who presumably lived there at one point with his wife, Holly Valance. Can the couple (pictured) have enjoyed inhabiting such a soulless, taste-free zone; all sharp edges, ghastly fittings and hotel lobby vibes? Gary Hersham, of estate agency Beauchamp Estates, which is selling the property, says One Hyde Park is ‘probably the finest building’ in England. I think we can all agree it probably is not. I pass it on the bus often, and can report it has all the allure of a municipal block in downtown Dubai. And surely buyers want more for their money than a pathetic ‘cocktail bar’. One of my favourite pastimes is perusing the websites of high-end estate agents in California, where properties come equipped with everything to tempt the super-rich. It’s gasping! They have breakfast nooks, staff wings, guest suites, offices, media lounges, pavilions, zero-edge swimming pools, music rooms, sun rooms, onyxtopped wet bars, skylit libraries, mirror-walled gyms, spas, discos, dual-island chef’s kitchens, master retreat suites, home theatres, maids’ quarters, ‘snack peninsulas’ — where you can eat crisps — and even an ‘indoor breezeway’. I don’t know what that is, but I want one. And Beauchamp Estates will have to try far harder to shift its charmless monstrosity.