When they first emerged on the scene, Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer were criticised for lacking skills beyond being able to “walk and talk at the same time”.
Location, Location, Location – on screen this weekend (August 23) – has now run for more than a quarter of a century, so they must have got something right. Although Kirstie concedes that walking and talking at the same time is indeed their “only discernible talent”. Phil agrees. When they started out, at least, they were “terrible”…
Phil Spencer on being paid less than Kirstie Allsopp
British reality property programme Location, Location, Location launched in May 2000. Phil and Kirstie just celebrated 25 years at its helm.
They work very differently from each other, Phil maintains. But they both get to the same result, and they have learned to use their differences to their mutual advantage. Nevertheless, they had no expectation that the show would be as successful as it has been.
“We both loved our jobs. We thought it was unlikely to lead anywhere, it was just a non-transmittable pilot,” Phil told the Telegraph in May. They both had successful property-finding businesses, so they didn’t need TV success.
“We just thought it would be quite fun to spend a weekend seeing how television gets made. And they were paying £600 a day,” said Kirstie.
£600 a day, you say?
“I didn’t get paid 600 per day,” Phil insisted. “Well, I did,” Kirstie replied.
Phil and Kirstie are now both multimillionaires with staggering net worths
By 2010, Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer were raking in £400,000 per year on multi-year contracts with Channel 4.
The company had to up their salaries after the BBC tried to “poach” them, the Mail wrote at the time.
Last autumn, Phil’s elderly parents both died in a car accident, having driven off a bridge into the Nailbourne River. They left Phil and his siblings about £18 million between them.
Meanwhile, according to various reports, Kirstie’s estate is worth an estimated £16 million. She owns a six-bedroom house in Devon, and a home in Notting Hill.
Her London residence used to be nine individual flats, which she bought one by one and then knocked into a veritable mansion. It occupies three floors.
Phil Spencer’s property company Garrington Home Finders went into liquidation in 2009 following the credit crunch. But fortunately for him, his numbers are still very much in the black.
Catch Kirstie and Phil on Location, Location, Location on Channel 4 at 3:35pm on Saturday. Love It or List It follows immediately afterwards.
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