Cave swimming, truffles, the best pesto ever… the perks were perfection for Alan Carr and Amanda Holden while renovating in rural Italy
Ed Grenby - 12 January 2024
Congratulations! You’ve bought a place and you’re moving in together!
Amanda Yes, we had such fun on the last series of this show, where we each bought a house in Sicily and did them up, that this time we bought one together in Tuscany. You can buy these old properties for just €1, but the trouble is, I let Alan choose.
Alan I’m a hopeless romantic. So I saw a picture of this gorgeous little Tuscan medieval water tower, and fell in love with it. Then we got there, and there is so much wrong with it. If you could put houses on Embarrassing Bodies, this would be on there. It was like being in a rubbish sitcom: you’d sit in a chair and fall through it, or lean on the table and one of the legs would come off.
But it’s all about the location, no?
Alan We both had an idea of what Tuscany was like – Florence is Amanda’s favourite city and mine – but Fornovolasco, where the house is, looks nothing like it. It’s in an area called Fabbriche di Vergemoli, which is like the Amazon! It’s a jungle!
Amanda Fornovolasco is this tiny village in the crevice of a mountain, and there are only 56 people living there. Though by the time we’d finished, I think we’d probably whittled it down to about two. Were you terrible neighbours then?
Always screaming at each other over decor decisions?
Alan Amanda’s style is very “out there”, and it’s gone up a gear this time because we were near Florence, so we did have that debate. I was thinking, “Florence, home of the Renaissance, art, music, literature, passion…” and she wanted it to look like Elton John’s spare room.
Amanda It’s true, Liberace would have been at home with my decor. But then Alan chose a wallpaper that to me looked like a pizza topping. Which is a shame because the idea of the makeover is to sell the house at a profit, with the proceeds going to charity.
Just as well you’ve recently bought yourself a new family home in Surrey,
Amanda. Will Alan be coming round to help with the DIY?
Amanda He will, actually! We had him over for New Year, but I’ll be doing some work on the place in spring and I want his quirky ideas. He found his forte in this series, and it was panelling and glue guns, so I’ll get him to bring them.
Alan I don’t know about that! I’ll bring the woodworm and the damp!
Did you get to explore Tuscany much while you were making the show?
Amanda We insisted on it – for inspiration! So we went to the lovely old medieval walled city of Lucca; we went to Pisa; we went to Florence; we went to Forte dei Marmi, at the seaside. We went truffle hunting, which was just orgasmic. We went zip wiring. We did everything – Alan even judged a cake competition, which obviously meant he was in heaven.
You had to get through seven cheesecakes, didn’t you, Alan?
Alan It was 17! Then it was a draw, so I had to eat three more! Which was fine, but later I was filmed going for a swim in these underground caves, and it was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me on telly, because as I was climbing out, I had one of my man-tits on one rung, and the other one on the rung below!
It sounds like you ate pretty well out there…
Amanda We did. The most memorable thing was that day truffle hunting: we went to this old, long-established family farm and took their dogs out sniffing for the goods. And we found two white truffles, worth about 800 quid each, took them back to the family restaurant and then decadently shaved an entire white truffle over this plate of the creamiest, most delicious pasta I’ve ever had in my life. And we’d just dug it up out of a bush, stuck it under a tap, and shaved it. It was bloody gorgeous.
Alan You just can’t have a bad meal in Tuscany. Obviously Amanda and I are always swanning around The Ivy and places like that, but here we were in little unfancy cafés with plastic chairs and plastic tablecloths… and you end up with just the best pesto you’ve ever had. We had pasta twice a day every day, and by the end of it even Amanda had a little “pasta baby” bulging out. Amanda had a belly! That’s the highest recommendation there is.
Congratulations! You’ve bought a place and you’re moving in together!
Amanda Yes, we had such fun on the last series of this show, where we each bought a house in Sicily and did them up, that this time we bought one together in Tuscany. You can buy these old properties for just €1, but the trouble is, I let Alan choose.
Alan I’m a hopeless romantic. So I saw a picture of this gorgeous little Tuscan medieval water tower, and fell in love with it. Then we got there, and there is so much wrong with it. If you could put houses on Embarrassing Bodies, this would be on there. It was like being in a rubbish sitcom: you’d sit in a chair and fall through it, or lean on the table and one of the legs would come off.
But it’s all about the location, no?
Alan We both had an idea of what Tuscany was like – Florence is Amanda’s favourite city and mine – but Fornovolasco, where the house is, looks nothing like it. It’s in an area called Fabbriche di Vergemoli, which is like the Amazon! It’s a jungle!
Amanda Fornovolasco is this tiny village in the crevice of a mountain, and there are only 56 people living there. Though by the time we’d finished, I think we’d probably whittled it down to about two. Were you terrible neighbours then?
Always screaming at each other over decor decisions?
Alan Amanda’s style is very “out there”, and it’s gone up a gear this time because we were near Florence, so we did have that debate. I was thinking, “Florence, home of the Renaissance, art, music, literature, passion…” and she wanted it to look like Elton John’s spare room.
Amanda It’s true, Liberace would have been at home with my decor. But then Alan chose a wallpaper that to me looked like a pizza topping. Which is a shame because the idea of the makeover is to sell the house at a profit, with the proceeds going to charity.
Just as well you’ve recently bought yourself a new family home in Surrey,
Amanda. Will Alan be coming round to help with the DIY?
Amanda He will, actually! We had him over for New Year, but I’ll be doing some work on the place in spring and I want his quirky ideas. He found his forte in this series, and it was panelling and glue guns, so I’ll get him to bring them.
Alan I don’t know about that! I’ll bring the woodworm and the damp!
Did you get to explore Tuscany much while you were making the show?
Amanda We insisted on it – for inspiration! So we went to the lovely old medieval walled city of Lucca; we went to Pisa; we went to Florence; we went to Forte dei Marmi, at the seaside. We went truffle hunting, which was just orgasmic. We went zip wiring. We did everything – Alan even judged a cake competition, which obviously meant he was in heaven.
You had to get through seven cheesecakes, didn’t you, Alan?
Alan It was 17! Then it was a draw, so I had to eat three more! Which was fine, but later I was filmed going for a swim in these underground caves, and it was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me on telly, because as I was climbing out, I had one of my man-tits on one rung, and the other one on the rung below!
It sounds like you ate pretty well out there…
Amanda We did. The most memorable thing was that day truffle hunting: we went to this old, long-established family farm and took their dogs out sniffing for the goods. And we found two white truffles, worth about 800 quid each, took them back to the family restaurant and then decadently shaved an entire white truffle over this plate of the creamiest, most delicious pasta I’ve ever had in my life. And we’d just dug it up out of a bush, stuck it under a tap, and shaved it. It was bloody gorgeous.
Alan You just can’t have a bad meal in Tuscany. Obviously Amanda and I are always swanning around The Ivy and places like that, but here we were in little unfancy cafés with plastic chairs and plastic tablecloths… and you end up with just the best pesto you’ve ever had. We had pasta twice a day every day, and by the end of it even Amanda had a little “pasta baby” bulging out. Amanda had a belly! That’s the highest recommendation there is.
ED GRENBY