Dick and Angel Strawbridge at Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson.
Paula Morris talks to Dick and Angel Strawbridge about their much-televised life ahead of their New Zealand visit
Even via Zoom, Dick and Angel Strawbridge, stars of television series Escape to the Chateau, seem larger than life. At home in France, squashed in front of a laptop, ebullient Dick looks like an old-school major-general, all moustache and sparkling eyes. Angel, in beret and silk jacket, resembles a glamorous spy sipping cocktails in 1930s Shanghai. The high-ceilinged room, plastered with old photographs, is Dick’s study, the one room his wife “has not been allowed to decorate”.
Theirs “is a ridiculous story,” Dick says. “Two decades apart, I was born in Burma, Angel was born in Essex, we come together, we meet, we fall in love and we buy a castle.”
The castle in question is Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson in northwest France, built in the late 19th century. In 2014 the Strawbridges bought it for £280,000, or around NZ$540,000, cheaper than many Auckland home units. For this they got 45 rooms over five floors, a moat, towers, stable blocks, an orangerie, a walled kitchen garden and woodlands. But when they moved to France in January 2015, the chateau was almost derelict, without running water, electricity, sewage or heating.
Luckily, the Strawbridges are no ordinary couple. Dick’s upbringing in Northern Ireland instilled a love of the outdoors, and his years as an engineer in the military made him capable of building or fixing anything, from a lift in one of the chateau’s towers to an ice rink outside the front steps. An accomplished chef and cookbook author, he began appearing on television as contestant, host or “environmental expert” on shows like Scrapheap Challenge.
He met Angel Adoree — aka Angela Newman — through their mutual agent. Angel had turned her love of all things retro and creative talents as a designer into a successful events business, the Vintage Patisserie; she’d also published books and appeared on The Dragon’s Den. Dick was divorced and in his 50s, with an aversion to city life. Angel grew up on Canvey Island in Essex, her family embedded in London’s East End. A holiday in France persuaded them to make the move, but finding the perfect home took so long, they had two children, Arthur and Dorothy, before they moved into Chateau-de-la-Motte Husson.
Escape to the Chateau began, Angel says, with a handful of episodes filmed with a two-person crew — ”a happy, aspirational story” and a way to earn money to help fund the renovations. An instant hit, Escape continued over seven years and nine series, attracting between two and three million viewers each week in the UK alone. It’s now broadcast in more than 40 countries around the world.
Filming on the final Channel Four series ended late last year, but the Strawbridge family has yet to experience camera-free life. Dick and Angel have been filming episodes of what they call their “travel show”, Escape to the Chateau: Secret France. “We don’t know what it feels like yet to smell the roses,” Angel says, “and in only a couple of weeks’ time, we’re getting on a plane.”
The plane is bringing them to Australia and New Zealand for six dates in their “Dare to Do it!” live tour, including Auckland’s Aotea Centre on February 26 and the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington two days later.
Their fame means millions of viewers feel they know the Strawbridge family, but this familiarity breeds tabloid-newspaper contempt. Headlines delight in rumours of staff bullying or marital woes.
According to British tabloids, Dick says, “We’ve sold the chateau about 20 times. And we’re always getting sacked and there are always big issues.” They’ve made this press commentary into part of the live show, where they discuss the sensationalist clickbait headlines.
Sometimes even the couple can’t resist clicking on them, to find out where the headline leads — like reading that Dick, yet again, is allegedly leaving Angel. The couple are “such a secure unit”, Angel says, that when Dick reads a headline aloud, they “have a giggle about it. Bottom line is, we always know the truth.”
The Covid pandemic forced a pause on their core business of summer weddings in the orangerie, glamping around the moat and other special events. But work on the estate continued, as did filming, and the Strawbridges published two books: A Year at the Chateau and Living the Chateau Dream. When asked which part of the renovation has brought them the most pleasure, Angel opts for the honeymoon suite, the first guest room she created, with its famous “wallpaper museum” in the tower.
“It still sort of takes my breath away,” she says. Dick opts for the walled garden, but then adds his study, the kitchens (family and commercial), his workshop and the potting shed.
They’ve stepped away from one of the show’s spinoffs, Escape to the Chateau: DIY, about the travails of other British people buying and renovating grand houses in France. One thing that series made abundantly clear: not only did these other couples lack the skills and knowledge of Dick and the artistic vision of Angel, they lacked the Strawbridge charisma on camera.
“We have always said that people can do anything,” Dick says, though he admits that “we don’t encourage people to go and buy a chateau, because of the stupidity of the act.” Now the series has been broadcast in France, they’re getting “nothing but positive feedback” from the French, Angel says, “because no one wants to buy an old chateau. They’ve got more sense.”
The message of the “Dare to Do it!” tour is less about renovating castles and more, Dick says, about “doing something with your life and having a go.” The power of Escape, Angel thinks, is the way the Strawbridges’ creative thinking in the house and gardens has inspired viewers to make, build or create something themselves. “It’s just about sparking their imagination. It has given people a bit of confidence to have a go at things, and that has been the most rewarding thing that we have seen from the show.”
This will be the Strawbridges’ first trip to New Zealand, and as well as the children, they’re bringing two familiar faces from the series, Angel’s parents Jenny and “Papi” Steve, and a long-time member of the chateau staff, Sasha. The children are rapidly growing up, busy with rugby and horse riding and their social lives: Arthur is already as tall as Angel, while Dorothy, they say, is “8 going on 18”, and determined to correct their French pronunciation.
Both Strawbridges are avid planners, scheduling meetings to talk through five-year goals. But as the children approach adolescence, Dick says, “our plan is to bed the family in after all the graft that’s been done, and just make sure that everybody has a chance to be happy and smile”. The children have their own plans, which at present include Arthur running a restaurant in the orangerie, with his parents and sister as staff.
Eight years after their wedding, their long-deferred honeymoon in Japan looks as though it will be a family trip as well: Arthur is an avid Pokemon fan. And “I have promised Mr Strawbridge retirement at some point,” Angel says, which her husband dismisses as “twaddle”.
When friends visit New Zealand, Angel says, “they come back and say, ‘I could live there’”. For the Strawbridges, however, France is home. After the tour, they have more episodes of their travel show to film and then their “manic” seaason of summer weddings at the chateau. Besides, says Angel, after their years of hard graft, they are “not moving, ever”.
Dick agrees. “Can you imagine packing this place up? That’s not going to happen.”
Escape to the Chateau airs on Living Channel and is also available on Sky Go.
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