Jamie Oliver's naked chef era house for sale
The house where Jamie Oliver lived and filmed the first two series of The Naked Chef is on the market. The three-bedroom Clerkenwell house is priced at £2,995,000, and for that you get your own slice of TV history - in a desirable part of London.
The house will be memorable to anyone who watched the first series or two back in 1999, as the kitchen, spiral staircase, and entertaining space where he served up snacks to his mates were all part of the set.
Since Oliver moved out in 2001, the area has been entirely gentrified, so no first-time young chef stands a chance of being able to afford a home there. The property itself has been transformed too.
The kitchen has been renovated, so the dated cupboards and cluttered shelves have made way for a double fridge and a curved counter-top overlooking a sleek dining room with a new wooden floor. The spiral staircase still rises from the other end of the room, but the functional metal stairs have made way for flash wooden ones - complete with glass panels in the floor.
In many ways you would be hard-pushed to recognise the home in its new incarnation.The renovation has continued throughout to include a spa room complete with a waterproof plasma screen and fibre-optic lighting.
The estate agent isn't keen to capitalise on the property's former life either - and makes no mention of The Naked Chef in the description. We can only assume that the work has transformed the experience of living in a property that Oliver once described as not being particularly 'homely'.
Oliver's moves
Oliver left the property behind long ago - moving to Hampstead in 2001, and buying a Grade II listed Jacobean mansion in Essex as a rural retreat a year later.
A few years after that he sold his Hampstead home for a rumoured £1.7 million (there were rumours that he was sick of drinkers in the pub nearby shouting up a the window for bacon sandwiches). He then snapped up a house in Primrose Hill for £3 million.
In 2008 when the house next door to his became available, the family bought it and knocked the two together - completing the work in 2009. The property is now said to be worth in excess of £10 million.
But what do you think? Has the passage of time and a complete remodelling weakened the celebrity link and the attractions of The Naked Chef's former home, or will people be as keen as ever to describe their home as 'Pukka' and slide down the spiral staircase after him?
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