Earning an upper-crust
STV, 9pm HERE we have a peek behind the posh, privileged doors of the British aristocracy – extraordinary modern-day blue bloods living in stately homes.
And it’s not all tweed and china cups (but there’s plenty of that too).
These lords and ladies don’t always fit into the mould you might expect.
We meet Princess Olga Romanoff, whose great uncle was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who was murdered by the Bolsheviks.
Mowing her own lawn and swearing like a trooper, she explains she’s running tours of her stately home, Provender House in Kent, for £14 a head to raise cash for the upkeep.
A plaque reads: “It’s not easy being the Princess.”
Currently single, she’s hunting down her ideal man – “a trained killer”, no less… We also meet her cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, and his husband James.
Ivar, whose father is a first cousin to Prince Charles, is the first royal to have a same-sex marriage.
They need to earn a crust to pay the £100,000-a-year costs of running their home, which features an ornamental lake, Gothic chapel and deer park.
The couple decide to gamble their reputation, and that of Michelinstarred
chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, by hosting their first-ever pop-up restaurant at their stately home of Bridwell, with tickets costing £165.
Elsewhere in this amusing insight, Lord and Lady Fitzalan-Howard hope to help fund the exorbitant running costs of their 126-room home – the imposing Carlton Towers in Yorkshire. They plan to turn part of the 3000-acre estate into a vineyard.
But can their first bottle of sparkling wine pop the market?