Channel 4 - Location, Location, Location

...Kirstie Allsopp, he presents the Channel 4 property series Location, Location, Location, Relocation Relocation and Location Revisited. Which is more dodgy business, is this show just a free loading advertisement for this pairs, real life jobs?. I wouldn’t buy a second hand ‘syrup’ of this geezer never mind my Englishman’s home and castle.

Phil also writes a property column for London Agents South Magazine, has ...
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If you visit channel 4 homepage and navigate your way to the location homepage you will find a load of info on how to buy your own home. Covering all angles including

First Time Buyers
The market is getting tougher by the day but it is still possible to make your first step onto the property ladder

Buying Leasehold What are the implications of not owning the freehold of your property?
Home Search ... more

What do you get if you cross, a middle aged balding estate agent, with a bunch of planks who don’t know where they want to live? Half an hour of tv dross which is enough to make you cry with boredom, boredom, boredom.

I can’t see what’s so great about moving house, let alone watching other people, move house. It’s thirty minutes of torturous tv hell in my book, I don’t think there’s one good part in it.

Although, I haven’t been sleeping well recently, so I think I’ll video an episode of this, and watch it just before bed time, that should do the trick, it normally sends me to sleep after 5 minutes, anyway.

House programmes, have become, what Karl Marx once described religion as, in his time, the “the opiate of the people”. They come in all shapes and sizes and genres, from building your own house from scratch , from the foundations to the roof, to others transforming your existing house into a dream home. They have people competing for houses, and renovators, decorators, home designers and valuators, all clamouring for a spot in the tv spotlight. Take your pick from this mighty list, they’ve all been on the box recently,

Grand Designs
Property Ladder
Location, Location, Location
Relocation, Relocation, Relocation
Home From Home
Selling Houses
Room For Improvement
Up Your Street
Making Space
A Place In France
A Place In Greece

Presenters

“Kirstie Allsopp’s rich background includes a period spent in India teaching English. Upon returning to the UK she worked for Country Living and Food & Homes Magazines, gained a wealth of experience within the interior design field at Hindlip & Prentice Interiors and studied the History of Art at Christie’s – all of which have helped give Kirstie an eye for detail when viewing properties”.- wrong it actually gives her a rather jaundiced and formulaic eye for finding anodyne dream homes for property climbers, who want to evolve from the primeval swamps of where they grew up, and lived with mutha and fatha in a brick built sh*t house with a tin bath int’ yard and karzie, one between the street, at the end of the road. Ten to a bed, and whippet tied to the front gate to eat the rats, and bite the neighbours. Nothing wrong with social climbing, but does it really make good tele ? Not for me. I think they should replace these junk programmes with Checkov and give ‘em all a brain seizure.

This programme is all about social climbing and the snobs who want to do it, it reveals more about the “contestants”, to me than it does about the locations. It’s like a big game show, with Phil and Kirstie as the genial hosts, and the hapless home buyers as the hopefull contestants, hoping for a big “win”.

I bet they think that Kirstie Allsop, flew down from heaven on a silver cloud with her fancy talk and fancy pants, come to whisk ‘em away to land o’ Barratts , or some where over the rainbow, where the only crock of gold they’ll really find is the crock o’ sh*t left by the previous owners, and the undiscovered subsidence, that means your newly found Eldorado will be making it’s way to the council tip, in a giant skip 6 months after you bought it.

Kirstie founded Kirmir Property Search, but recently joined partnership with her co-presenter Phil Spencer at Garrington Homefinders, striving to find the perfect property for every client and making it as painless a process as possible.

When Phil is not running his highly successful Property Search company, Garrington Home Finders, with his business partner and co-presenter, Kirstie Allsopp, he presents the Channel 4 property series Location, Location, Location, Relocation Relocation and Location Revisited. Which is more dodgy business, is this show just a free loading advertisement for this pairs, real life jobs?. I wouldn’t buy a second hand ‘syrup’ of this geezer never mind my Englishman’s home and castle.

Phil also writes a property column for London Agents South Magazine, has appeared in Home Buyer magazine and Night & Day in the Mail on Sunday and has a monthly column in The Sunday Times. He is also a popular corporate choice with clients including British Gas, HM Land Registry, and Norwich Union.

Hang on a minute didn’t I just say they both work for the same property finding agency, in real life owned by Phil........eurgghhhh?.......... That’s a bit iffy isn’t it. A bit convenient if you know what I mean ....nudge, nudge.

Our hapless duo Phil spencer and Kirstie Allsop, have the weekly task of finding property dimwits find their shang ri la, residences.

The only geezer who comes close to annoying be even more than these two is that thunderbirds puppet who presents Grand Designs, nothing personal but you really want to roll up his architectural blueprints, and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine after an hour of his inane middle class ramblings, on the virtues of post modernist self build. They make a million pound house out of hay bails and plastic sheeting in the middle of London, next to a railway line , just waiting for some psychotic brat to come along with his ciggie lighter form the poundshop and burn the bloomin’ lot down for a right giggle. Why don’t you build your self a post modernist pot, and p*ss in it , you wilf !

It’s not that I’m not a fan of home programmes, as it happens I think that Sarah Beeny one, off Property Ladder is a real corker, professionally speaking of course. She can fix my dado rail anytime. I know she’s a bit of rough , but I like her any way, she gets on with the job and tells it like it is,. I think it’s funny when they ignore her advice and loose ‘loadsa’ money on the property. Well you should have listened to Beany she knows her stuff you know, but I also like it when they win as well . That show is a bit different as it is more towards developing properties for re-sale rather than living in , but I find it more interesting. Maybe she could have a word with Phil and Kirstie, and find a couple of mugs to buy ‘em, when they’re done. What a bloomin’ racket.

I find this programme a real insult to the intelligence, it wouldn’t be so bad but they’ve had the audacity to re screen the whole of the last series under the title relocation, relocation, relocation, which the should have called repeat, repeat, repeat because that is what it was.

They had the cheek to repeat the whole show as an ‘update’ to let you know how the folks were getting on in their homes, they didn’t know they wanted. I think the way they tacked on an extra 5 minutes at the end to the original footage, and made out it was a new show, was astonishing.

I was amazed when I saw the first one of these up date programmes ten minutes into it, I thought right now they’ll start on the new stuff. 20 minutes.....yeah right , I remember this now the new stuff please, half an hour yawn....staring to fall asleep..... , hang on a minute this is just the last show when do we get the new stuff.?
With two minutes before the end Phil knocks on the door of the happy house movers to discover they’re not in...! ( maybe they’ve moved again, without telling ‘em?).

That’s great isn’t it ? we wait, for what seems like an eternity, and then just when we get to the ‘interesting’ part, we find they’ve gone the shops or something, or down the boozer, or the estate agents, and we still don’t know what’s ’appening. Mrs mop answers the door, only to tell us “ they’ve all gone away dear, won’t be back for a fortnight.........”, bloomin marvelous.

It is quite a popular programme, and it must have a reasonable audience or, they wouldn’t get away with repeating it in such a shameless format. I just don’t know what people see in it....you’re not one of them are you..?

If you haven’t seen it, what happens is this, there’s this geezer, who needs some kind of personality implant, and this bird, who helps him find houses for people with more money than the sense they need to find somewhere to live.

Given a choice of about three or four, they are given the details, and some pictures via a laptop, and after picking out the favourite ones, we are treated to the spectacle of their trogging round these potential future abodes, looking at the bedrooms, the kitchen, the karzie, listening to them twittering and grumbling about, ooh... it’s too small, ooh ...it’s too big, or we’ll never get our avacardo bog and bath suite in ‘ere, or it’s the wrong colour, or there’s no where to put the budgie, and the parrot,..........................................................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...............oH!...sorry I seem to have nodded off for a minute...

It’s splendid entertainment for the middle classes, whose biggest worry seems to be, parking the 4x4 on a postage size drive way, or wether the cocktail cabinet will squeeze in to the knocked through ‘living area’. That’s a front room knocked into the kitchen to you and me.

Unashamedly middle class, and anodyne viewing, the only social issues in this feast of twaddle , would be I wonder what the neighbours are like, I hope they don’t smell or anything?, we don’t want to live anywhere rough or anything. It’s for the middle class and the middle class aspirationals, who think they can buy their way out of social class and social misery, well you can’t.

Latest location, location, locations include,

Glasgow ( £175,00 ish to spend) nice place if you like drunken Scotsmen

London ( £500,000 to spend) might buy you somewhere the size of a telephone box.

Cirencester ( £330,000 to spend) never been so I can’t say

Doncaster ( only £175,00 to spend again, mind you Donny is near Hull, so house prices are bound to suffer a bit )

Ascot (£300,000) you’d need a win on the gee- gees to buy one of these.

It seems just way out of price for your average bod, to me. Is it that it’s another ‘dream’ prog or some thing, selling a dream, see how the other half live, or an aspirational thing or something, I think that must be the appeal because I haven’t got £300,000, to £500,000, to shell out on my home sweet home.

I think a lot of these programmes have an ‘aspirational’ leaning, or why else would people watch them. It’s like the antiques road show, where these people who have found an undiscovered van Gogh in the attic, are going to cop for a million, but we never will, it’s a kind of voyeurism, to watch other people having pleasure or, doing the things we want to do, without actually doing it ourselves. We don’t have to risk our life savings on one lousy deal, but we love to watch other people do it.

I find this kind of television voyeurism a very widespread phenomena, we all like to watch other people having experiences, that we don’t have to, it’s entertaining, stimulating, cathartic, and risk free. I suppose it goes along side our celebrity culture, by living ones lives through other people. What a depressing thought. The victim or subject takes all the risks for us, has all the pain and all the pleasure, and we look on , living the same experiences, by proxy, as a kind of inverted schadenfreude. ( that’s pleasure through other peoples misery).

If you must make programmes about housing why not make one about all the dossers who don’t have anywhere to live, and tackle some real social issues, instead of some dozy punter who doesn’t know where he wants to live. That’s the only real housing issue of any relevance in the present social climate. They could call it dosser, dosser, dosser, or something.

They could find dossers alternative shop doorways to sleep in, like they could move up the property ladder from Aldi’s doorway to Marks and Spencers, or something , and you could have Phil and the Kirstie, shuffling round town in dirty macs sussing out if any ones been kipping there, or if they’re going to get a slap, for pinching somebodies doss.

Of course they could start out on a park bench as first time dossers and work their way up to the town hall steps, with a cardboard box and all the trimmings.

I notice they’ve never featured Hull as a location, location, location, I wonder why, then I suppose they might have to call it,” Come and have a home, if you think your hard enough”....eeuurrgghh!.....you WOT !.. you WOT !.....I don’t think it would be that popular.

If you visit channel 4 homepage and navigate your way to the location homepage you will find a load of info on how to buy your own home. Covering all angles including

First Time Buyers
The market is getting tougher by the day but it is still possible to make your first step onto the property ladder

Buying Leasehold What are the implications of not owning the freehold of your property?
Home Search Agents Letting someone else do the legwork for you

Moving Into A New Area
A new house usually brings with it a whole new environment too - so how do you make the most of your new location?

Finding The Right Area
Finding the right area to live in is invariably trickier than finding the right house

Finding The Right Property
Finding the right property can be a long and tiring process, especially with so much choice on the market.

Buying Online
Find a new home without leaving your desk

And believe it or not, yes I was right, on page 2 of this buying advice is a little piece about house finder agents, who does that remind you of yes, the pitter patter of tiny feet, as Phil and Kirstie come trotting round the corner with all their house hunting titbits.

To put the tin hat on it there is even the name and address, and web link of their house finder agency, shamelessly displayed, so that you can have that them, find your new house, for you.

Home Search Agents work only for buyers, as opposed to Estate Agents who work for the seller. They'll do the searching for you, deal with Estate agents and negotiate and oversee the whole deal. Not only do you get someone with a wealth of property knowledge to tap into at anytime, but you'll also avoid a lot of stress and wasted time, they say.

The charge is typically 1.5% of the value of the home you buy - but remember you'll have an expert negotiating on your behalf so there's a good chance you'll actually save some or all of their fee.

The Association of Relocation Agents on 08700 737475 can give you contact details for highly recommended Home Search agents in your area.

Well I went to www.Garrington.co.uk in the name of research, to find a sultry picture of our Phil, adorning the front page, and an overview of the company.

It just occurred to me, I bet all these houses on the show are on their books, I bet it’s a way of shifting all their old properties on their books they can’t shift and get paid for it as well. Where else do they find all theses houses every week, don’t tell me they go out and find a fresh batch every week, I bet Phil just slides into the conversation, oh, by the way I know where there’s a nice little house ....only £300,000, that’ll do nicely...?

Their head office is based in Chelsea and searches throughout Greater London across all price brackets and in the Home Counties including Surrey, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, for properties at the higher end of the market.

Also their West Country office searches throughout the Southwest at all price levels including Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire. They also have partners that cover Scotland and Ireland, this explains why they always have a property to offer every where they go !

If you want in on this tv spin off you’ll need to fill in a search brief basically “ I want my ideal home to be .....” and submit. I can’t guarantee you’ll get Phil knocking on your door with his laptop, or Kirstie bouncing up your garden path with a portfolio of dream homes, but you try it you might get “lucky”.

I think it’s horribly cynical, there must be a law against such blatant advertising, on a tv show, the whole show is just an advert for these two......that explains it......THAT is why it is so boring. There is no real content.

In the name of balance there is also another web site on the location, location, location, web site www.relocationagents.com, which will give you an alternate list of similar agents, if the thought of Phil and Kirstie paying you a visit gives you the shudders.

Location , Location, Location, is screened on Channel 4 on Tuesday evenings at 8pm. The shows duration is 30 minutes.

This week, Kirstie and Phil take on a property search in Somerset for a co-pilot and his family. Olaus, Fiona and baby Angus live in Cardiff but a job change for Olaus prompts the move to Somerset, closer to Bristol Airport.

Let’s hope they don’t end up living in a cardboard box. 

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