Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty appear unafraid of a renovation project, having bought an unloved house in an exclusive part of north-west London to make over.
The Birmingham-born TV presenter and Irish comedian paid £4.9 million for the rundown property in Hampstead and have won planning permission to transform it into a mid-century modern-style home.
Deeley and Kielty cited the architecture of America’s West Coast – where the couple have lived for years – as their design inspiration, as well as the work of Modernist architect Alvar Aalto.
Materials that evoke Los Angeles will be used throughout to help the celeb duo and their sons feel at home after they relocate from the US.
Deeley and Kielty put their LA home on the market for $4.995 million (£4.1 million) and moved their family to London in 2020.
Deeley had originally purchased a Seventies house in Beverly Hills for $2.7 million (£2.2 million) in 2006. Having risen to fame hosting SMTV with Ant and Dec between 1998 and 2002, the TV presenter relocated to LA.
She and Kielty married in Rome in 2012 after a whirlwind romance that culminated in Kielty flying from Belfast to LA to surprise her at her birthday party at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The couple are currently living in north London while they oversee the renovations on the Hampstead house.
Deeley has posted dramatic videos on Instagram Stories documenting the process of gutting the property ahead of the revamp.
The TV presenter and former host of SMTV was back stateside over the summer holidays to host the upcoming season of So You Think You Can Dance.
Kielty is the new host of The Late Late Show, requiring him to commute from London to Ireland every Friday night. The comedian has requested that he cover the cost of his own flights, while the broadcaster RTE covers their carbon offset.
The couple’s love of mid-century design is evident in the mood board submitted as part of the planning documents for the Hampstead house.
It features an interior shot of The Cooper Wave House in Malibu, designed by architect Harry Gessner in the Fifties.
The north London renovation offers the chance to recreate a slice of California, but without the worries about gun crime that Deeley said motivated her to reconsider raising a family in the US.
“Fear was part of this,” she told You magazine.
“There was a moment when I was with a friend looking at potential schools for Milo and we had to ask the question nobody wants to: ‘What do you do if there is a live shooter on the premises?’”
After Kielty and one of their sons was caught in an active shooter scare in an LA mall, the couple decided to return to the UK.
Luckily their high-profile neighbours appear to be sanguine about the couple’s plans for a Modernist home in leafy north London.
Celebrities including Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton Jim Broadbent have been lobbying to deny planning permission for a new mansion in West Hampstead they claim is better suited to Malibu.
