The £27m home Peppa Pig bought
...well, maybe Emma Forbes had a bit of help from her wealthy celebrity parents and super-rich hedge fund husband!
AS THE daughter of actress Nanette Newman and film director Bryan Forbes, and the wife of a super-rich banker, Emma Forbes was never destined for a life on the breadline.
But even she has astonished her showbusiness friends by buying a £27 million London mansion – for cash.
The four-storey home has five kingsize bedrooms, five bathrooms, an underground pool, a gym, and a lift to take cars to the basement garage.
But it is not to everyone’s taste – one neighbour has described it as looking like a ‘downmarket mortuary’.
The purchase comes after Ms Forbes, 49, who provided the voice of Mummy Hippo in the popular children’s cartoon series Peppa Pig, made a handsome profit on the sale of her previous flat, in Chelsea.
Land Registry documents show that she sold that sevenbedroom home for £43million in February.
She and her hedge fund boss husband Graham Clempson, 51, had bought it for £18.5million in 2007, before spending large sums on revamping it.
Registry records show there is no mortgage on the couple’s new home.
Ms Forbes and Mr Clempson moved into her new-build house with their children, Lily, 19, and Sam, 16, in February. Neighbours have expressed mixed views about the house, which was completed this year after a two-year build. It replaced a red-brick mansion with a neo-classical facade that was torn down by the previous owners. Although the architects said they designed the new yellow-brick house to blend in with other Victorian and Georgian townhouses in the conservation area, some residents complain that it ‘just sticks out’.
One neighbour said: ‘Apparently the council approved it, which is outrageous.
‘In an area like this it’s important the buildings fit a certain look. But it just sticks out, it doesn’t look like anything that belongs here.’
Another resident added: ‘It looks like a downmarket mortuary. There was more taste to how it was before. Now it looks like a council estate.’
London property developers have revealed that the sale of Ms Forbes’s previous apartment for £43million made it one of the most expensive flats in the UK.
The priciest apartment in the UK is believed to be in the One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge, which sold for £140million last year.
Tristan Ward, a solicitor acting for Ms Forbes and Mr Clempson, said it was ‘inaccurate’ to say that she made a profit of £24.5million on their previous flat as the couple spent considerable amounts of money refurbishing it before selling it.
Mr Ward added that his clients’ property affairs were a ‘private matter’.
Ms Forbes’s mother, 80, is famous for her roles in the 1970s British film classics The Stepford Wives and International Velvet, both of which were directed by Mr Forbes. He died in 2013.