Escape to the Chateau

[The80sweregreat]

Channel 4 last night ( sunday). Dick Strawbridge and his partner have bought a 45 roomed Chateau in France, looks beautiful on the outside, but crumbling inside and needs extensive work. Everything you can think of! Bats in the belfry that are protected and have to stay too.
Did anyone watch? I really enjoyed it, but what made it for me was how laid back the couple were about everything!

I can't believe it would even be only 100 grand, you can spend that renovating a normal sized house. (To a high spec).

I loved the bathroom the most. It's gorgeous.

So really the programme was a massive advert for their business? Oh well.

Yes cosmic it seems to be. I have taken umbrage with C4 as the previous Escape type programmes were filled with doom and gloom right until the very end when everything turned out well. These are slebs touting for business. As well as the vintage wedding business you can also book Dick and Angel for speaking events. Dick has referred to himself as "a TV tart" and I feel that is quite apt.

I thought their daughter Dorothy was ridiculously cute in her wedding outfit though misses the point.

I really enjoyed this show. Although I think Dick is bloody mental having kids again when he is already a Grandfather. I also love that he calls Angel, Angela. I also think he has the patience of a saint with her. He is doing all the basic important work and she fannies about screen printing tea towels as wedding invites.

It felt a bit wrong watching Dick with his new family- I wonder what happened with his ex wife? I remember him from his other programmes.

No way did the figures add up and that pissed me right off,it seems so disingenuous some how. We spent 70k on doing up a very modest house nothing fancy whatsoever- an awful lot of what they had done was done for free.

Dick reminds me of my dh, he'll have a go at ANYTHING, he's brilliant at working out how to solve problems, DIY etc.

Didn't like the décor at all but very envious of the orangey!

I PRESUME an awful lot was done for free.

Have been doing a bit of googling.

This is Angel's website vintagepatisserie.co.uk/angel-adoree/

Where she says 'she won the nations hearts when she appeared on Dragon's Den'

But my favourite quote:
'ith Angel’s eye for styling and hands-on approach to making clothes, many assume she’s a graduate of Central Saint Martins.'

What a thing to say about yourself.

I know, I guffawed at that too when I googled last week

Also couldn't find out her age anywhere- sheer nosiness!

I was wondering her age too! I reckon late 30s.

I thought he was much older than his actual age, he's 57.

The pair of them seem to be a match made in heaven. I also had a rummage around the internet for info on Angela Angel Adoree. The way Dick constantly calls her Angela despite the fact that she calls herself Angel reminds me of a father that refuses to accept his daughter's preferred nickname.

I thought it was all a pile of wank. No way they renovated all that with that budget. I found Angel try-hard and wanky. He looks about a hundred years old. His kids look like his grandchildren.

I assumed Angel was her business name and Angela was her real name.

It does seem like she was looking for a partner to continue 'the brand'. I wonder when they first met.

He only divorced in 2013 according to Wikipedia.

Just googled and they split up ages ago after the 3rd series of It's not Easy being Green.

I didn't know anything about them until it was mentioned upthread about other TV programmes and did some googling. Brigit is the polar opposite of Angel; a passionate environmentalist who has never worn make up. I wonder why they split up? I think Brigit is well rid.

I just googled- yes, I remember her, she's beautiful! She runs a B and B now apparently.

Oh no got that wrong, she used to, not now.

Yes she is very beautiful. It seems she also does environmental talks by request and it particularly passionate about bees. My initial reaction was that she is older than Angel but then I remembered that she is probably young enough to be Dick's daughter!

"Thrifting"

Ugh

Angel Adoree sounds so twee, as were the silly diamonds with the ribbon on the walls.

I was so when she said she wanted an arch and he just demolished that part of the wall.

I wasn't surprised by his have-a-go attitude (or the whiteboard) as I remember him first appearing in Scrapheap Challenge about 20 years ago with his brothers.

I did get the impression that what Angela wants, Angela gets - her parents came over to babysit and next thing we see them hard at work doing the renovations while she was still fannying about.

Chardonnay- I imagine if there had been a way that an arch could've been built he'd have done it for the reasons Sally pointed out

Yeah, Angela did say that she always got what she wanted, I think she was talking about a window seat or something.

I've been trying to get DH to change a lightbulb I can't reach.....