Join Kirstie and Phil at ho-ho home this Christmas!

She’s the posh one who got Twitter in a spin over washing machines. He’s the blokey one just trying to get a word in. Meet property gurus Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer – the happiest non-couple in showbusiness! 

Christmas is such a magical time of year – the season of good will – that it has even healed Kirstie Allsopp’s hurt feelings enough for a return to Twitter. ‘The Christmas trees, they are what brought me back,’ says the co-host of the hugely popular property show Location, Location, Location, who vowed never to tweet again after the ‘bitter fury’ provoked by a comment she made about washing machines, of all things.

‘Goodbye to the little white bird,’ she wrote earlier this year, turning her back on 400,000 followers because of the row. But now she reveals that an outbreak of Christmas spirit has tempted her back online. ‘For about four or five years now, starting on the first of December, people have sent me pictures of their Christmas trees. Hundreds of them every day. I retweet a proportion of them. It is a source of so much fun. Someone sent me a tweet saying, “You can’t leave Twitter, what about the Christmas trees?” And I thought, God you’re so right. I’m not going to let someone’s negativity and meanness make me give up something I enjoy.’

The reason she quit in the first place may sound trivial but it actually goes to the heart of what this fiercely bright, talkative 46-year-old does with her co-host Phil Spencer, who is sitting beside her on a sofa waiting for a chance to get a word in edgeways.

For the last 17 years this likeable pair have toured the country helping people of all incomes and backgrounds find their dream homes on Location, Location, Location.

‘We may not see the very bottom end of things – apart from the excellent documentary Phil made on homelessness – but we do see people’s day-to-day struggle to make ends meet, pay the mortgage, get to work, create something for their children, pay the child care, pay the nursery fees…’ she says.

Now they are back with another show, Love It Or List It, in which Allsopp helps people who are desperate for more space to transform their homes, while Spencer looks for alternatives they can afford. ‘It’s a very topical show for where the market’s at and a debate people are having all over the country,’ says Spencer. ‘Shall we invest money in our house and stay, or is it better to go?’

The point is that they pride themselves on being in touch, both with the housing market and the way people live. So Allsopp was really stung by the reaction to a tweet she made over the summer in which she agreed with someone else that it was ‘disgusting’ to do the laundry in the same room as you make food.

‘My life’s work is in part dedicated to getting washing machines out of the kitchen,’ she wrote, intending to signify to her 400,000 followers – and anyone else besides – that she was making a ‘fun’ point to try and get a debate started. Nothing unusual there: she has been a guest on Question Time and frequently used Twitter as a platform for headline-making views about issues from fertility treatment to the alleged evils of boarding schools. But this time, the reaction touched a nerve.

‘What really upset me was the newspaper columnists – mostly women – going, “It just shows she’s completely out of touch.”’

For the last 17 years this likeable pair have toured the country helping people of all incomes and backgrounds find their dream homes

It’s an easy claim to make of a baron’s daughter who lives in Notting Hill, London with a millionaire property developer, but she goes on the attack. ‘Actually, they are so London-centric they only think about places where the properties are so small you have no choice. I’m the one who goes across the whole of the nation and sees houses that are worth much less money and people who are earning much less money, and who actually knows people are desperate to get the washing machines out of the kitchen.’

The last straw was a columnist who said she was a controversialist, deliberately winding people up. ‘I thought, f*** this, the last thing I am is a controversialist. I hate the idea of deliberately having an argument with someone about anything. I expressed a fun view, loads of people agreed, loads of people disagreed, which is fine. Bog off and stop trawling Twitter for imaginary bad news!’

So Allsopp announced she was giving up Twitter for good. How long did that last? ‘Six weeks. Probably eight weeks.’

And she didn’t look at it at all during that time? ‘Of course I looked at it, you’d be mad not to look at Twitter, it’s about news. I’m a news junkie.’

She did not tweet though and the silence felt more like a year, she says, because it happened in the middle of the great debate about equal pay, after the BBC revealed how much more it was paying to its male presenters than their female counterparts. So, do she and Phil get the same money from Channel 4?

‘Absolutely. We have the same agent and I do a lot of the negotiating as well,’ says Allsopp, who is said to earn more than £400,000 a year from the channel. Her screen partner tries to insist it’s only natural they get equal pay because they do the same job, but she interrupts. ‘Phil my love, you’re missing the wider point with this: we started in this together so we were both paid the same from the outset. If we were two women, would we have been paid so well? I don’t know.’

Spencer frowns and says he thinks they would but Allsopp is having none of it. ‘I asked a few female friends of mine in the business what they were paid and I was absolutely staggered. I remember being in a car with a famous TV presenter who got a call from her agent with a job and told me her standard day rate. I was like, What? You’re kidding me!’

That’s because it was so much lower than her own. ‘I have always known that I am better paid because my wage was pegged from the beginning to that of a man.’

Spencer is a big, manly presence in jeans, a navy pullover and burgundy shirt with his silvered hair cut close at the sides but almost gone on top. He is a year older than Kirstie, but she looks quite a bit younger than him in a black and white printed dress and wraparound bronze shawl. She’s lost a lot of weight recently, after going on the Metabolic Balance diet by nutritionist Amelia Freer, who helped James Corden and the singer Sam Smith. Bread, potatoes and wine are all off the menu, although she might make an exception at Christmas. ‘I do love pudding wine.’

How they climbed the property ladder

Phil bought a Victorian semi in southwest London for £1.26 million and sold it ten years later for £3.6 million

Kirstie 

Bought her first flat age 21 in Battersea for £72,000 in 1993 and sold it five years later for just under £100,000. Next came a flat in Ladbroke Grove, bought for £80,000 and sold three months later for £115,000. (She never moved in because she had a dog and there was no garden). Her third flat, in the same area, cost £189,000 but the value soon doubled as the property boom hit. Today she lives in Notting Hill with partner Ben Andersen. Originally two flats, the property has been knocked through to create a family home worth millions. They also have a 14-bedroom home in North Devon that they rent out for £500 a night. 

Phil 

Bought his first property, a four-bedroom flat, in Wandsworth Common for £160,000 in 1996. He divided it into two flats, sold one for £160,000 and lived in the other. He then bought a second home in the area with wife Fiona before in 2005 buying a Victorian semi in southwest London for £1.26 million (pictured). They dug out the basement, installed a gym and sold it ten years later for £3.6 million. They bought their current home in Hampshire, with a tennis court, gym, home cinema and games room for £3.35 million in 2015.  

The pair were thrust together as complete strangers on the set of the pilot episode of Location, Location, Location in 2000. They appeared to be an odd couple: the cheeky geezer Spencer, surveyor turned property developer, cast alongside a plummy Sloane Ranger type who specialised in finding nice new homes for super-rich chums.

‘He thought I was mad. I thought he was gay,’ says Allsopp. ‘He’s camp as Christmas.’ Phil’s eyebrows go up. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Both were far smarter, funnier, more expert and far more likeable than the stereotypes suggested and they sparked off each other brilliantly on screen. So here comes the question that occurs to everyone who watches one of their shows and wonders at the chemistry between them. Have they ever been lovers?

‘No,’ says Allsopp quickly. ‘No!’

Not even a quick snog under the mistletoe? ‘No.’ She’s firm about that. ‘Absolutely not.’

He looks a little hurt by this dismissal, but she pats his knee. ‘Sweetheart, it’s not because you’re not a very attractive person.’ Then she turns back to the question. ‘It’s just that to get drunk and wake up next to Phil would be like, Oh!’ Allsopp gasps in mock horror.

‘Also, neither of us are destructive people. We are both very family-minded, very constructive people and the idea of so violently destroying your personal and professional lives because you do one thing, one night… I mean, I can’t imagine.’

Allsopp lives with her long-time partner Ben Andersen in Notting Hill with their two young sons, Oscar and Bay, and his two boys from a previous relationship. Spencer has recently moved to rural Hampshire with his Australian wife Fiona and their sons Jake and Ben.

‘Also,’ says Allsopp, ‘Phil would die of guilt. He’s really not the type.’

He nods enthusiastically, having already got together with Fiona before he met his co-host. ‘We’ve been friends for 17 years. That’s a very long time to be close to someone. If we ever had done anything, we wouldn’t be sat here today. It would have wrecked things. It’s never crossed either of our minds.’ They have become used to all the speculation over the years, though. ‘People tried to put us together at the beginning and when that didn’t work they tried to pull us apart and say we didn’t like each other at all.’

That certainly doesn’t seem true. Both write books and make shows on their own – including her celebrations of arts and crafts and home-making and a very moving Channel 4 documentary he made earlier this year called Find Me A Home. But Spencer and Allsopp are at their absolute best when they’re together as a double act. One critic recently compared them to a loving older couple who have decided that gardening and companionship are better than sex. ‘That is really good,’ says Allsopp with a guffaw. ‘A very good description of us!’

Spencer is originally from Rutland but he went to university in London, trained as a surveyor then set up his own property search company. Allsopp did not do a degree but worked at Christie’s – where her father was chairman – and her mother’s interior design company before striking out with a friend to find homes for the rich in London.

Location, Location, Location helped turn house buying into a national sport. Then came the financial crash and now we’re in a total mess, says Allsopp. ‘The system is bust. The whole purchasing system has broken down. Lawyers are much more risk-averse. Mortgage companies are much more risk-averse. Lending is much harder. So it’s more expensive to buy a house, people are less willing to do it, they are starting later – there’s more a sense that your 20s is a time for having fun, not for saving up to buy a house. And it’s harder. So the situation is pretty gloomy to be honest.’

Attitudes have shifted dramatically, she says. ‘People have also changed in terms of what they want in their life. When I bought my first flat I was 21 years old, walking to work, making my own sandwich, having a pizza once a month on payday, not having any foreign holidays or a car – that all seemed totally fine in pursuit of home ownership. I was young and I could make those sacrifices.’

Booze, dogs and the box! Kirstie and Phil’s plans for the big day

What will Christmas be like for you? 

Kirstie: ‘We’ll Christmas at my brother-in-law’s house. We have lucked out, because we’re in charge of the booze. We will take some wine, a Christmas cocktail that I’ll make and probably some home-made Baileys because we had that on my Christmas show last year and it was such a success.’ 

Phil: ‘Every other year we go to Australia, where my wife is from. Mum and Dad are down in Kent and so this year we’ll go down there for a week. My mum hosts everything and cooks everything and nobody else is allowed to get involved.’ 

Kirstie is a big fan of Kirsty MacCall and also the song Fairytale of New York

Do you have any family Christmas traditions? 

Phil: ‘We have Christmas dinner in the evening and at the end – after pudding – we play a cheese game with our dogs. I’ve got two cocker spaniels. All the family’s five dogs are kept out of the dining room for the meal but then we hide cheese in different parts of the room and allow the dogs in. It’s all about whose dogs finds the most cheese. It’s a highly competitive game. There used to be a tradition on Christmas Eve that I would go out with my pals to the village pub. One year my mother, returning from Christmas Midnight Mass, saw these two shoes sticking out of a hedge. It was me singing carols on my back!’ 

Kirstie: ‘We have a Christmas supper, which I much prefer. Having a six o’clock meal takes the pressure off the morning – it means you can enjoy what Father Christmas has brought. One year my family got so competitive about the roasties that both my brother and sister separately cooked roast potatoes the way they wanted to do it.’ 

How about going to church? 

Kirstie: ‘I try to attend church at some point. Either Midnight Mass or the next day.’ 

Phil: ‘We always go to a family service on Christmas Day.’  

Kirstie says she will be watching Call the Midwife this Christmas

Favourite Christmas song? 

Kirstie: ‘Driving Home For Christmas.’ 

Phil: ‘Oh that’s great. Driving Home For Christmas. You’ve pinched mine. 

Kirstie: ‘Well I tell you what, you have Chris Rea because I love Kirsty MacColl so I’ll have Fairytale Of New York.’ 

What will you be watching? 

Kirstie: ‘The Queen, the Victoria Christmas special and Call The Midwife.’ 

Phil: ‘We always watch the Queen.’ 

Do you give each other presents? 

Allsopp: ‘Phil has given me the same present for the past ten years: a ham that gets us all the way through Christmas. I make a place for it in our meal planning. [Phil reveals his usual supplier is no longer providing hams] You’re going to have to sort this out! But I have to find Phil a present, which I take quite seriously.’ 

What taste reminds you of Christmas? 

Phil: ‘Port, after dinner. I wouldn’t have it at any other time but on Christmas Day.’ 

Kirstie: ‘My partner Ben’s niece makes this delicious parsley sauce that we have with ham. So Phil – you’d better get me that ham!’

Young people don’t want to do that any more, do they? ‘Someone got in a hell of a lot of trouble the other day for saying, “If you didn’t have coffee or eat out for five years you could save up for the deposit…” But that just isn’t true in most cases. That wouldn’t be enough to save up for a deposit with the kinds of house prices we have now – or it would take them so long because the cost of living is so expensive.’

How about the recent abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers, will that make any difference? ‘You have never been able to borrow the money for stamp duty, that was the problem, you had to find that money in cash. Now this might give you four grand more for your deposit, which will enable you to borrow more money on the house. But that will make the house price go up.’

Their new show Love It Or List It brings couples together as they try to decide whether to move on or stay put. ‘There was a lovely couple in Yorkshire – she had moved into his house when they got together and it was not suitable for them any more, but he was absolutely not up for moving at all, under any circumstances,’ says Allsopp.

Every episode involves an architect drawing up plans for improvements to the home, although the couples themselves have to pay for all the work you see on screen. This isn’t DIY SOS. ‘It’s their money, we don’t put a penny in to it.’

The man in Yorkshire eventually realised how much the idea of moving meant to his partner and that he loved her more than the house.

 Spencer has recently moved to rural Hampshire with his Australian wife Fiona and their sons Jake and Ben

‘I was crying. Phil was almost crying. They were crying. He said, “I’ll move.” And she was like, “No, I don’t need you to move now, because we’ve done this work and I understand more about you. I just needed you to say you would move for me.” It was so touching, as you really genuinely felt that this couple had moved forward in their relationship in a really positive way.’

Spencer and Allsopp intend to go on as a double act for many more Christmases yet, aware that they are better together than apart, at least on screen. Spencer has the last word, for a change. ‘We make a show that genuinely helps people, it changes people’s lives, that’s a very satisfying place to work, particularly in the television world. But we’ve also got each other.’ He glances across at her with what looks very much like love, however platonic. ‘I don’t think we would have got this far without that.’ 

‘Kirstie and Phil’s Love It Or List It’ returns on January 3 at 8pm on Channel 4