Anne Robinson is on a mission to get Britain to talk more openly about money. “Everyone needs to stop treating money as if it’s vulgar but worrying about it the whole time,” she says.
To prove her point, she goes to fetch her handbags. Or at least the ones she keeps in her elegant London house, in Kensington. More are stored at her main Gloucestershire home.
“Here we go,” she says, dumping them on the sofa. There are two soft leather Bottega Veneta bags, costing £1,875 each. There are two Hermes Birkins (£7,000 each) and a smaller Kelly one.
And there there is a curious canvas, bag-for-life number. “To you, that is a plastic shopping bag,” she says, before informing me that the shop she buys it from will only let you in if you ring the doorbell. It is a Goyard St Louis bag. It costs £700.
“I just love it. I can use it on the beach. It’s great on airplanes.”
But if Tesco made it, rather than a Paris atelier, would it be as appealing? “Probably not,” she admits.
Robinson is being very good-natured about my rummaging around in her wardrobe and fridges. She has two – an impeccably clean drinks fridge, containing Badoit fizzy water, Evian, Diet co*ke, champagne and white wine for guests (she doesn’t drink). The food fridge is almost empty, save for a few boxes of Tupperware containing meals prepared by Trisha, her Gloucestershire housekeeper.
But that is because she has spent the last couple of months being very nosy herself, making a two-part documentary, Britain’s Spending Secrets, meeting spendthrifts and skinflints. And analysing why some people are prepared to spend £900 on a flash fridge-freezer when they have bailiffs breathing down their neck.
It’s very entertaining and, at times, quite revealing, sometimes about Robinson herself. For instance, the presenter refuses to criticise Charlotte, a single mother, who lives on benefits but spends and spends, arguing she “deserves” the good things in life.
“I thought there was something quite heroic about Charlotte. She had a poverty of education, but she was bouncy and she had a point: some of us get a better chance than others,” Robinson says, before making a dig at my private education.
“I thought: 'I don’t blame you. Why shouldn’t you have the same sofa as Kim Kardashian?’ Is that who she’s called?”
But, surely, there is a big difference between those who flash cash that they have, and those who spend on tick, only to spiral into huge debts.
Robinson isn’t convinced. When it comes to money, “you should do exactly what you want”.
For someone who presents Watchdog, the country’s leading consumer advice programme, she is curiously ignorant about the ins-and-outs of finance.
She has no idea what a loaf of bread costs and guesses a pint of milk costs 99p. (It’s between 25p and 45p at most supermarkets.)
I ask if she has a credit card. “Yes. I have a direct debit card.”
That’s not the same thing, I say. “Isn’t it?” she says, before laughing and adding: “Sometimes on Watchdog, they have to sit me down at the start of the day and explain things to me. To me, it’s another plastic card in my wallet.”
She then concedes she has a Peter Jones store card, but that’s because she gets sent vouchers. “But we [and by this she means her assistant] pay it off at the end of the month.”
Even some Kensington residents, untouched by the recession, have changed their shopping habits, and might pop into an Aldi, Lidl, Primark or Poundland.
At the mention of the last one, she hoots “no” in Lady Bracknell style manner. I feel she may light another Diptyque candle to expunge the filth coming out of my mouth.
“I just love beautiful clothes. I’m no different from my mother, who used to empty Bond Street twice a year. Trying on and buying beautiful clothes gives me enormous pleasure. I’m not going to get that by going to…” – there is a pause here – “Next or Marks & Spencer.”
“I once bought a sandwich at the small one in Cirencester. It’s hard to put my finger on the year.”
Her underwear is bought from “a really wonderful lingerie shop in Cirencester. I get most of it there.” It’s called Dessous Chics, if you want to spot Annie among the suspenders and basques.
But though she is charmingly open about her extravagances – property, two divorces, paintings, Audis, mink coats, handbags – she is rather coy about her earnings. At the very peak of her career, when she was shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic to present both a US and British Weakest Link, she made up to £6 million a year.
How much did she earn last year? “I don’t know,” she says.
That’s not possible, I say.
“Genuinely, I don’t know.”
I ask if it was more than £1 million. She nods. “Yes, I’d like to think I’d hit seven figures.”
She points out that this came not just from her BBC work, but from property investments, too.
She defends her ignorance about the details of her finances. “I have almost zero interest in figures. I say to my accountant, no meeting is to last longer than ten minutes. Figures bore more. A deal delights me and earning a lot of money delights me. But my accountant can not interest me in looking at the figures.”
I suggest, post-recession, the country has become less snobbish in judging people on what they earn and where they spend it.
She says: “I am far too shallow to know whether Britain is a better place. It’s quite a nice place for me.”
Britain’s Spending Secrets is on BBC One, Wednesday 19th, 9pm
