CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Pools, palm trees and pirates in the boudoir...
it's Britain's campest pad By Christopher Stevens Published: 23:05 BST, 6 June 2024 | Updated: 23:15 BST, 6 June 2024 e-mail View comments Outrageous Homes ( Channel 4 ) Rating: That's a first. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen turns up to inspect a homeowner's decor, in a harlequin jacket, with his goatee dyed black and white like a badger's barnet . .
. and he looks underdressed. Swaggering like Peter Wyngarde as Jason King, the campest ladies' man in telly history, Laurence was launching his foray into Outrageous Homes, on Ch4+, the ad-free subscription option on Channel 4's video-on-demand service (it's due to air on Ch4 later this month).
But when he turned up at a £5 million country house dubbed the UK's answer to the Playboy Mansion, on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon, he was comprehensively out-camped. With a swimming pool dominating the ground floor, embalmed palm trees reaching up to the vaulted ceiling, and a launching pad for a hot-air balloon on the roof, this home was so outrageous that nothing Loz saw later could compete — not even the terraced house entirely coated in mosaics, nor the cottage with a Wild West ranch in the back garden. Sadly, the architect and first owner of the Stratford party palace has zonked out permanently, though a statue of him still stands in the grounds.
A first for Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen - he turns up to inspect a homeowner's decor, in a harlequ.
