Holly Valance, the former singer and Neighbours actress, has become a high-profile figure in Right-wing politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Now, her husband, Nick Candy, has been announced as treasurer to Reform UK. In an interview with GB News on December 10 he said he hoped to raise more than £40 million for the party. He claimed that the party’s membership would overtake that of the Conservatives in the next six months. Currently, it has 100,000 members and the Tories have 130,000.
He also shared that his children called Nigel Farage “Uncle Nigel” and said he was a “close, close friend”.
Mr Farage said in an interview on December 10 in the Telegraph that Mr Candy will take up the role of treasurer in the new year and that his first job will be to raise funds to fight the May county council elections in England.
The treasurer role confirms the couple’s status in Right-wing circles. Until recently Mr Candy had been better known as a billionaire property tycoon. He cited “too many broken promises” as the reasoning for earlier ending his membership of and donations to the Conservative party.
The high-profile couple – who split their time between their £75 million mansion in Chelsea, their residence in Monaco, a £175 million penthouse in One Hyde Park, and a £10 million Grade II‑listed mansion in the Cotswolds – have become key faces in conservative circles in recent years. They attended Boris Johnson’s wedding to Carrie in 2021 and are known to have hosted everyone from Leave EU founder Arron Banks to former US ambassador Woody Johnson at their seven-bedroom Cotswolds home.
Valance’s first association with Trump came in 2022, when she was pictured standing alongside the former POTUS, Mr Farage and her husband with the caption, “Great dinner at Mar-a-Lago”.
Her contemporary persona – describing “leftie” ideas as “crap” and claiming climate change is “not a crisis” – certainly seems a far cry from how she was known in the early days of her career. So how exactly did Valance go from Australian pop princess to darling of the far-Right?
Finding fame as a teen: Neighbours and Kiss Kiss
Born in Australia to a Serbian father and a British mother, Valance grew up in Melbourne and began modelling as a teenager, posing for supermarket catalogues and ad campaigns. By age 14 she is said to have been earning $200 an hour.
In 1999, age 16, Valance got her big break after being cast in the hit Australian TV soap Neighbours as Felicity “Flick” Scully. She left the show to pursue a music career after a few years, her first and still most memorable single, released in April 2002, being Kiss Kiss, an English language cover version of Turkish singer, Tarkan's Şımarık, which peaked at No 1 in the UK and reached the top 10 in 17 countries.
But music was not to be. After releasing her album Footprints later that year, which included three top 10 hits, Valance then announced she was no longer interested in pursuing music, making a return to acting instead.
Her most high-profile role came in 2005 as Nika Volek in hit US drama Prison Break, which she followed up with a series of film credits including DOA: Dead or Alive (2006), Pledge This! (2006), Taken (2008) and Kambakkht Ishq (2009).
Valance relocated to the UK in 2009 and appeared on the ninth series of Strictly Come Dancing shortly after, partnered with professional Artem Chigvintsev.
She was eliminated in the semi-finals, coming fourth overall. But she never quite managed to hit the big time on screen and withdrew from the entertainment world in 2013.
Marrying into the Candy dynasty
When she left the world of showbiz, Valance had already started dating Nick Candy. She met him at a dinner party in 2010 and the pair instantly fell for each other, the Daily Mail reporting that Valance “didn’t know anything about him” at the time. She said, “I just thought, “Cor, if I didn’t fancy you so much, we’d be the best of friends. Instead, I just want to make out with you all the time.’”
Candy attended the Epsom College, a public school in Surrey, and graduated from the University of Reading. Alongside his brother Christian, he made his fortune redeveloping properties. In 1995, the brothers bought their first property, a one-bedroom flat in Fulham. Using a £6,000 loan from their grandmother, the brothers renovated the £122,000 apartment while living in it, selling it 18 months later for £50,000 profit.
Their best-known project is the luxury apartment block One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, which also houses the Mandarin Oriental hotel, a favourite with the A-list when they stay in London.
The Candy brothers are estimated to share a joint net worth of £1.5 billion, and their clients reportedly range from pop stars such as Kylie Minogue to ultra-wealthy oligarchs and sheikhs. Candy has, in the past, boasted of his collection of cars and watches, admitting he owns "too many" timepieces. Speaking of his assets in This Is Money magazine in 2007, he said: "It's not as if you need to have a yacht. But then again we live in Monaco so for four or five months of the year we use it non-stop, every day. And a lot of my friends use it – it's a great way of escaping real life."
Based on their ample funds, it is hardly a surprise that when the couple married in October 2011, their Beverly Hills ceremony cost a whopping £3 million. A large portion of the cost is reportedly due to the presence of singer Katy Perry, who is said to have been paid £1.2 million to serenade the star-studded guests, including Simon Cowell, Tracy Emin and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, as well as their mother, Sarah, Duchess of York. According to the Times, Candy is also friends with comedians Jimmy Carr and David Walliams, with the paper referring to him as "an Olympic-level name dropper".
The pair have two children: their first daughter, Luka Violet Toni Candy, was born in November 2013 and their second, Nova Skye Coco Candy, in September 2017. Valance has revealed that dealing with the property developer's busy lifestyle can be “tricky”, claiming that he works seven days a week. “He worked on Christmas Day and even the day we practised our vows with [the] priest he took a call in the middle of it”, she said on the Made by Mammas podcast in 2019. “He was like, 'got to take this sorry, guys!' I was like, 'we're at the altar practising our vows'! So that's who I married, I know that.”
In 2020, the Guardian reported he had donated £100,000 to the Conservative Party. The following year, the Mirror released a photograph showing that he had attended a party with Shaun Bailey, the then Tory London mayoral candidate, in December 2020, violating coronavirus restrictions. The story came after the Times revealed in March 2021 that Candy was heading the fundraising efforts for Bailey's mayoral bid.
A decade at the heart of London’s Right-wing political set
Since Valance’s departure from the entertainment world, she has, alongside her husband, been part of an affluent Right-wing social set on both sides of the Atlantic and they have been regulars at Tory fundraising events. Associates include wealthy Right-wingers such as Leave EU founder Arron Banks, GB News owner Paul Marshall and former US ambassador Woody Johnson, as well as other Donald Trump and Brexit supporters and bankers.
In April of this year, Valance, Candy joined a group to celebrate Farage’s 60th birthday party at Boisdale, a steak restaurant in Canary Wharf. Valance was one of three people, along with Farage’s son and Donald Trump (via video) to give a speech in tribute to the Reform leader, describing him as “one of the bravest men I know”.
‘Wait, why’s that 90s’ singer there?’ – Valance’s public entrance into politics
The first public indication that Valance was entering the political realm came in 2022, when Farage tweeted a photo of himself standing alongside Donald Trump, Valance, and Candy.
Users on X/Twitter were baffled. “Imagine telling your 2012 self that in 10 years Nigel Farage will tweet a picture of him standing between Donald Trump and Holly Valance – with a picture of Kim Jong Un in the background – and nobody will bat an eyelid,” one person wrote. “Wait, why’s that 90s’ singer there?” another asked.
However, Valance was only just getting started. In February 2024, she hit headlines once again after attending the launch of the conservative movement Popular Conservatism, led by former PM Liz Truss. “Everyone starts off as a leftie and then wakes up at some point after you start either making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home, and then realise what crap ideas they all are – and then you go to the Right,” she said in an interview at the event.
She also took aim at climate change, claiming that “the air is better than when I was growing up, it used to stink walking down the street when I was growing up”. In a separate interview with GB News in March, Valance slammed Greta Thunberg, saying, “I don’t understand why you have this, like, demonic little gremlin high priestess of climatism as the goddess in classrooms, Greta [Thunberg]. All the kids are all coming home with depression and anxiety. [sic]
“Why would you go to your music lesson or bother doing your homework or get out of your bed if you think we’re all going to be dead in five years anyway?” She added.
She went on to declare that education about gender identity and discussions about sexualities should not be allowed in schools. “I don’t think sexuality and children should be in the same sentence. I don’t think anyone’s sexuality is anyone’s business,” she claimed. “You don’t know about mine. I don’t know about yours. Why would we?”
Valance has said that she did not intend to “speak out” about politics, telling the Times in May 2024. “It was a funny sliding doors moment because I didn’t think anything I said was particularly edgy or profound or revolutionary. But maybe it was a good moment for someone in the entertainment industry to buck the trend of only contributing their latest project pitch or their pronouns”. Which Mr Farage confirmed saying, “she kept quiet for many, many years”, adding that he always warned Valance that “once you go public there’s no way back”.
And it seems that insiders do feel Valance has had an influence with her political statements. An unnamed Australian diplomat told the Times said she was “one of the reasons we secured such a favourable free trade agreement for Australia” in 2021. “She had all of the Right of the Tory party eating out of the palm of her hand.” The Times also reported that the Tory Party have repeatedly discussed making Valance their London mayoral candidate.
Not everyone was so happy about her sudden entrance to the political fray, however, least of all her half-sister Olympia, 31, who also starred on Neighbours. “It was like, ‘Oh my God,’ when she said all that stuff,” she told the Australian radio show Allan & Carly in May. “I’m like, ‘Oh God! Everyone’s going to think that that’s what I think!’ And I don’t.”
‘It’s a Holly party’ – fundraising for Donald Trump
Back in June, Valance was among many famous faces attending one of the biggest nights in the calendar for the Right-wing social set: a London fundraiser for president-elect Donald Trump. The glitzy event, where tickets cost $100,000 (£78,500), had been dubbed by Farage, who attended, as a "Holly party". “It’s a Holly party,” he said ahead of the bash, expected to include many of the same guests as his own 60th birthday bash in April. “So you can guarantee it’s going to be enormous fun.”
The former president’s son Donald Trump Jr and wife former Fox News anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle were also there, as was Mr Candy.
Trump’s team were reportedly delighted with the support from Valance. "She's glamorous,” a representative of Trump’s campaign team said. “She doesn't fit into the pigeonhole." All eyes are on the next Holly party.
