Homes & Property

Who's moving: homes gossip

TV makeover star moves on

With a baby on the way, ex Changing Rooms star Oliver Heath has paid £440,000 through Goldin Lemcke for a four-bedroom house in Brighton’s trendy Seven Dials area. It replaces a three-bedroom Victorian terrace house nearer the sea that the interior designer unsuccessfully tried to sell for £420,000 earlier this year.

“In the end we decided to rent it out until the market changes,” says the former windsurfing instructor. “Our new place is an extremely ugly Sixties detached house that I’m going to give a complete makeover to. It will be an eco showcase for the 21st century.”

Heath, married to jewellery designer Katie, with a daughter Lyla, runs EcoCentric, an environmentally friendly online shop selling home furnishings and gifts.

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Former Coronation Street actress Nikki Sanderson - she played Candice - is resisting the temptation of moving from Manchester to Leeds, where she has just landed the role of barmaid Dawn Bellamy in the soft-centre, Sunday-night Sixties police drama series Heartbeat.

“My mum Judy is my best buddy and that’s why I live within a two- minute walk from her,” she says. “But I’m very happy to make the daily commute to Yorkshire TV’s studios as it only takes 40 minutes.”

Alas, her Manchester roost plays havoc with her personal life, as her boyfriend of three years, actor Danny Young, moved to Essex after leaving Corrie himself. “We’ve never lived together,” trills the Blackpool-born starlet. “We’re very happy together and see each other whenever we can.”

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The troubled Marquis of Blandford has moved back into a farmhouse on the 11,500-acre Blenheim Palace estate near Woodstock after years of estrangement from his father, the Duke of Marlborough. But don’t expect him to be living there rent-free.

“Jamie’s sister [interior decorator Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill] has always paid rent on her four-bedroom farmhouse and so will he,” says a friend. “The duke runs Blenheim on a commercial basis and doesn’t give favours to family, particularly Jamie.”

For decades the twice-married Old Harrovian car fanatic has disgraced the Churchill name with his heroin- and cocaine-fuelled lifestyle, which has twice landed him in jail.

“But he now seems to be making a real effort to kick his addiction and is back living with his wife [Welsh ceramicist Edla Griffiths], who is expecting their second baby in the New Year,” adds the friend.

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Do you fancy becoming one of the first foreigners to own a holiday home in Cuba?

“It’s a dream no longer,” declares Ranald Macdonald, owner of the Belgravia restaurant and jazz club Boisdale. “I’ve formed a joint venture with my brother Andrew and Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism to develop 370 acres of beachfront land near Havana into a country club and golf resort.”

Prices for the 850 units in Varadero will range from £133,000 for a two-bedder to £800,000 for a huge penthouse. “You will acquire a completely clean title as the state has owned the land long before Fidel Castro arrived,” adds Ranald.



Published: 20 August 2008
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