Amanda Holden and her chum Alan Carr each bought a house in Sicily — but that wasn’t the end of it
Amanda and Alan’s Italian Job Friday 8.30pm BBC1 (not Scotland)
Ed Grenby - 4 January 2023
Wait. You’ve bought a house together? In Sicily? Whose crazy idea was this?
ALAN Well, if it’s a big success, it will be my idea. If not, it’ll be Amanda’s.
AMANDA We were both just desperate to get out of England, get away from masks and lockdowns and get a bit of sunshine. And the only way we could think of was to get a job abroad. Then I heard about this “one euro” scheme, and Alan and I did a bit of research on it: basically there are all these empty properties in towns across Italy and France and Croatia, where people have left for the big cities, so to try and breathe new life and energy into the towns, these homes are being sold for one euro.
Great. Where do we sign up?
ALAN I’ve got mates who’ve said “Here’s a tenner. Get me a row!” But it’s not that simple
AMANDA Yes, you have to show you’re going to finish renovating the property in a certain time, and that you’ve got the funds to do so, and that you’re not just going to resell it. There are all sorts of rules and regulations…
ALAN You’re making our programme sound like Watchdog, Amanda! It’s not Watchdog; it’s a platform to show how gorgeous Sicily is and what you can do on a budget. Anyway, Amanda and I got one each, but we worked on them together.
Didn’t you drive each other mad? Working on something like that together brings out the worst in any couple…
AMANDA Alan certainly saw my controlling and manipulative side.
ALAN I did! She keeps planting these seeds in your mind until she gets her own way, then makes out it’s your idea!
AMANDA Alan’s worst fault is that he’s s**t at tiling. I never told him, but we had to pull off all his tiles and redo them when he wasn’t watching.
ALAN I am a complete moron when it comes to DIY. I was worried that the house was going to be worth less than a euro by the time I was done. Which would be a problem, because we’re going to be auctioning them for charity
Why did you choose Sicily?
AMANDA At the time, it felt like a less obvious destination, but since then a couple of other shows have been made out there. The White Lotus was filmed there, Danny Dyer’s doing something there and Anton Du Beke, too – we bumped into him. But it’s just such a lovely island: you’ve got all that landscape, these wonderful old hill towns, the marble – handy for the renovation – and the sea, which is just the most gorgeous colour. I think the sea is like a third character in our…
ALAN Ménage à trois.
What did you do when you weren’t tiling?
AMANDA We spent a lot of time on the sea – boats, paddeboarding, everything – but my favourite was this kind of acropolis, Selinunte, right on the edge of a cliff, which we rode up to on horseback at sunset – absolutely gorgeous. There was another one that had toppled over, and I was like, “Alan, do you think we could renovate that, too?”
ALAN There’s all sorts in Sicily, though. Up in the hills, there’s Erice, where you’re going to have that real, old-school The Godfather experience. Then you could go to Marsala, a port town where there’s reggae pumping out and everyone’s drinking rum and bodyboarding. And then there’s the salt pans where you can have a relaxing chill-out body scrub.
AMANDA Although if you’ve got a little cut or you’ve just shaved or waxed, that salt will sting.
ALAN Ooh yes, typical me to have a back, sack and crack the day before we went out there. That was not the most comfortable day.
No wine to dull the pain?
ALAN The wine was amazing, and we had a go making it, too, hand-picking the grapes for this traditional Sicilian wine.
AMANDA Oh, but the food! The pasta! And the bread!
ALAN They’re so passionate about bread! We went to an actual museum of bread, and I had my cynical hat on, but it in the end I couldn’t take the mick because they were so in love with bread. This museum had, like, religious paintings made out of bread, which is part of this annual Easter festival they have. It was like a very posh Greggs. But honestly, Sicily is so beautiful, you look out the window and see all these different colours, and it just relaxes you. I’m quite a frantic person, so it took me a while to chill, but the Sicilians have this thing about “the art of doing nothing”, and it’s the perfect place for doing just that. It was blood, sweat and tears – literally – doing up those houses, but there was beauty, too.
Wait. You’ve bought a house together? In Sicily? Whose crazy idea was this?
ALAN Well, if it’s a big success, it will be my idea. If not, it’ll be Amanda’s.
AMANDA We were both just desperate to get out of England, get away from masks and lockdowns and get a bit of sunshine. And the only way we could think of was to get a job abroad. Then I heard about this “one euro” scheme, and Alan and I did a bit of research on it: basically there are all these empty properties in towns across Italy and France and Croatia, where people have left for the big cities, so to try and breathe new life and energy into the towns, these homes are being sold for one euro.
Great. Where do we sign up?
ALAN I’ve got mates who’ve said “Here’s a tenner. Get me a row!” But it’s not that simple
AMANDA Yes, you have to show you’re going to finish renovating the property in a certain time, and that you’ve got the funds to do so, and that you’re not just going to resell it. There are all sorts of rules and regulations…
ALAN You’re making our programme sound like Watchdog, Amanda! It’s not Watchdog; it’s a platform to show how gorgeous Sicily is and what you can do on a budget. Anyway, Amanda and I got one each, but we worked on them together.
Didn’t you drive each other mad? Working on something like that together brings out the worst in any couple…
AMANDA Alan certainly saw my controlling and manipulative side.
ALAN I did! She keeps planting these seeds in your mind until she gets her own way, then makes out it’s your idea!
AMANDA Alan’s worst fault is that he’s s**t at tiling. I never told him, but we had to pull off all his tiles and redo them when he wasn’t watching.
ALAN I am a complete moron when it comes to DIY. I was worried that the house was going to be worth less than a euro by the time I was done. Which would be a problem, because we’re going to be auctioning them for charity
Why did you choose Sicily?
AMANDA At the time, it felt like a less obvious destination, but since then a couple of other shows have been made out there. The White Lotus was filmed there, Danny Dyer’s doing something there and Anton Du Beke, too – we bumped into him. But it’s just such a lovely island: you’ve got all that landscape, these wonderful old hill towns, the marble – handy for the renovation – and the sea, which is just the most gorgeous colour. I think the sea is like a third character in our…
ALAN Ménage à trois.
What did you do when you weren’t tiling?
AMANDA We spent a lot of time on the sea – boats, paddeboarding, everything – but my favourite was this kind of acropolis, Selinunte, right on the edge of a cliff, which we rode up to on horseback at sunset – absolutely gorgeous. There was another one that had toppled over, and I was like, “Alan, do you think we could renovate that, too?”
ALAN There’s all sorts in Sicily, though. Up in the hills, there’s Erice, where you’re going to have that real, old-school The Godfather experience. Then you could go to Marsala, a port town where there’s reggae pumping out and everyone’s drinking rum and bodyboarding. And then there’s the salt pans where you can have a relaxing chill-out body scrub.
AMANDA Although if you’ve got a little cut or you’ve just shaved or waxed, that salt will sting.
ALAN Ooh yes, typical me to have a back, sack and crack the day before we went out there. That was not the most comfortable day.
No wine to dull the pain?
ALAN The wine was amazing, and we had a go making it, too, hand-picking the grapes for this traditional Sicilian wine.
AMANDA Oh, but the food! The pasta! And the bread!
ALAN They’re so passionate about bread! We went to an actual museum of bread, and I had my cynical hat on, but it in the end I couldn’t take the mick because they were so in love with bread. This museum had, like, religious paintings made out of bread, which is part of this annual Easter festival they have. It was like a very posh Greggs. But honestly, Sicily is so beautiful, you look out the window and see all these different colours, and it just relaxes you. I’m quite a frantic person, so it took me a while to chill, but the Sicilians have this thing about “the art of doing nothing”, and it’s the perfect place for doing just that. It was blood, sweat and tears – literally – doing up those houses, but there was beauty, too.
ED GRENBY