DIY SOS returned to screens last month, with frontman Nick Knowles and his team transforming the homes and lives of families across Britain. And fans of the TV presenter will be pleased to know that Nick is making two TV appearances this week, as he is also a guest on BBC One's Saturday Kitchen with Matt Tebbutt.
The DIY expert, 59, has been the face of the nation's favourite home improvement programme since it first aired in 1999, teaching viewers along the way how they can transform spaces. But he's also been involved in a whole host of other shows that you may not have realised.
Away from the cameras, he's had four children to three different women. While he keeps his personal life fairly private, he has opened up about the trolling over his new relationship, and why he chose to keep a 10-month health battle a secret. Here's what you need to know about Nick's life off-screen.
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Nick grew up in Suffolk and began life in showbiz as a runner in television production, before moving into presenting. In the early 1990s, he presented an ITV show called Ridge Riders, which featured celebrities riding classic motorcycles along off-road tracks across the UK.
Nick then appeared as a member of Channel 5 chat show 5's Company between 1997 and 1999. He shot to fame with DIY SOS, which he still fronts to this day, and has also presented doco series Real Rescues since 2007.
The star has also hosted entertainment shows Who Dares Wins, Last Choir Standing, Guesstimation, Secret Fortune and Perfection. Before stardom, Nick married his first wife Gillian and they went on to have two children - daughter Tuesday, 25, and son Charlie, 24.
He also fathered son Tyrion-J, 24, during an affair with dancer Paula Beckett, the Mirror reports. After his split from Gillian, while on set for BBC's City Hospital in 2000, Nick met fellow presenter Suzi Perry, with whom he was with until 2003.
He later married Jessica Moor, 26 years his junior, in 2012. A year later, the couple opened an antique shop and began a home design consultancy together near their home in Berkshire.
In 2015, they welcomed Nick’s youngest son, Eddie, now seven, before they split in 2016. Nick fears he failed his older children and is determined not to make the same mistakes with his youngest.
Talking to the Mirror in 2019, he said: "Probably earlier on in life I didn’t get that balance so well. I have a young son now and I make sure I find time to spend with him to hunt dragons or invade Mars.”
Since last summer, Nick has been dating 31-year-old Katie Dadzie, and was recently spotted with her on a date in London. The pair were first linked romantically in August after he met the young mum-of-two at a kids’ group attended by his son Eddie.
In recent weeks, Nick has felt the need to defend his relationship, after online trolls targeted the pair over their 28-year age gap. Speaking to the Daily Star, the BBC presenter said: “If you put yourself on TV then you know you are going to get all that stuff. It is more upsetting for the people I am with.
“Some of the nasty things that are said, and the implication that because she is younger that she is only interested in me for the money or whatever. She has two kids, she owns property, has three businesses on the go, is wealthier than me.
"It is upsetting that they talk about people I am with.” According to Katie's Instagram, she runs two businesses – Boa Boa, which sells lingerie and sex toys, and another called Boobbix, which sells “lactation products for breastfeeding mums”.
Meanwhile, Nick has also recently opened up about his 10-month battle with Long Covid, which he kept a secret from TV bosses. He contracted coronavirus when it first hit the UK in March 2020, and suffered from the long-term effects behind closed doors out of fear of missing out on work, Express reports.
“I had it really bad right at the start of lockdown, and me being impatient, tried to get straight back into exercise directly afterwards," Nick explained on-air to Lorraine Kelly in April. He added: “There seems to be some correlation there of going too hard at exercise too soon after Covid can actually cause you problems.
"I had what I would describe, and what my doctors would describe, as long Covid for about 10 months. Afterwards you just have no energy at all. But I didn't want to tell anyone because I thought I wouldn't get a booking for work! I kept it to myself."
Explaining the toll the condition took on him, Nick said: "So I'm climbing up big seven-storey buildings on ladders and I had to stop every two ladders to go, 'I'm taking in the view'. But I managed to get through it. Amazingly, seven or eight months ago I managed to get better."
You can watch DIY SOS - The Big Build - on BBC One on Tuesdays at 8pm. All previous episodes are available on BBC iPlayer.
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