Lucy Alexander, star of BBC1’s Homes Under the Hammer, talks to Fiona Adams about life, loss and G&Ts on the beach
TV star Lucy Alexander and I are ensconced in the 1665 restaurant at The Mitre in Hampton Court, on a rare sunny day in October, when Lucy leans in conspiratorially and whispers that singer Rick Astley is sitting to our left.
Sure enough – beautifully attired and coiffured – it is he, but we both play it cool and resist the urge to sing ‘Never gonna give you up’.
Of course the Thames Ditton resident – who describes herself “as an Elmbridge girl through and through” – is used to mingling with the stars.
She attended drama school with Tamzin Outhwaite (the pair remain good friends) and has been a successful actress and presenter since she was 17, Lucy has also rubbed shoulders with many a local celebrity over the years.
She is even married to an ex-Premiership footballer, Stewart Castledine, whom she met on a blind date after seeing him on the cover of Mizz Magazine.
You might imagine she is a little starry and mysterious herself, yet she is as friendly and down to earth as can be and we embark on a good old chinwag about life under the new normal.
As for many people, 2020 has been a tough year for Lucy. After losing her mum Kay to cancer back in February, the pandemic followed – Lucy, Stewart and children Kitty and Leo all succumbed – along with a huge downturn in TV work and a host of milestones that passed without the usual scale of celebrations: Lucy’s 50th, Kitty’s 18th and the couple’s 20th wedding anniversary amongst them.
Yet, with September there have also been new beginnings.
Most significantly, daughter Kitty – who was struck down with an autoimmune disease aged seven leading to paralysis – has left home.
“Kitty has always wanted to go to drama school and she auditioned for nine, getting quite a few ‘yeses’. She decided to take a full-time three-year BA at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) in Hammersmith. These are really tough times and I’m so proud of her and where we’ve all come from. She’s also just passed her driving test and is very independent!
“She was absolutely determined to live away from home, which shocked me. But she’s got a great adapted room in halls of residence and she’s coping really well. She did come home for one weekend and I’ve popped in after shopping in Westfield, just to check in!”
If one child leaving home wasn’t change enough, Lucy and Stewart’s son Leo, 15, has also flown the nest and it’s clear that the Castledine children have certainly followed in their parents’ footsteps.
“It’s all drama and football in our house. Leo has debuted for England’s Under 16s and is contracted to Chelsea now. Because of lockdown, the club wanted to get the kids together in a hotel, Monday to Friday,” Lucy explains.
“He is full-time at the academy and he has his lessons and tutoring and plays matches every week… he absolutely loves it. So he left, she left and I turned around and had no kids. I kind of liked it, I kind of hated it,” she laughs.
Lucy herself grew up in south London and Kent in a very regular household with her older sister. Her mum was a nursery nurse while her dad worked as a car dealer and driving instructor.
“It was very much a working-class upbringing,” Lucy says. “It wasn’t particularly career motivated and there was no one in the industry, no one in the business of film and television at all.”
Nevertheless, at the age of nine, she wrote a note to her parents, which she left on her bedside table, outlining her theatrical aspirations.
“It said: ‘Dear mum and dad, please, please, I beg you please, let me go to stage school, it would be my dream.’ And my mum said to my dad, ‘come on, we’ve got to do this’ and that was it. Right from the word go, I wanted this, I always had a passion for dancing, for drama, and they’ve always supported it. I had no leg up, no doors opening for me whatsoever.”
After stints at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and Arts Ed, Lucy turned her childhood dream into showbiz reality and her parents were thrilled.
“My parents bloody loved it,” she laughs, “They told everyone ‘Lucy’s on!’ They wouldn’t go out during the day between 10 am and 11 am because Homes Under the Hammer was on... every morning for 13 years! My mum was my greatest fan and they 100% supported my career.”
With signature blonde locks and an engaging smile, it is easy to see how Lucy has conquered the TV world.
From early-career ventures such as TV adverts, a role as a children’s presenter and an appearance in Chesney Hawke’s video for The One and Only (‘We’ve all got a few skeletons in our closet!”), she soon became a household name fronting shows like ‘Hammer’ as she calls it with Martin Roberts.
“I really enjoyed the live TV concept. I like just being myself and chatting to people. I found it easy and I thought that if I could earn a living doing that, it would feel natural and right. Homes Under the Hammer came along and it was a really natural fit. I had the passion for property and the interest in talking to the person, about the house. I still miss it terribly. It was a journey and I loved it but my kids had grown up with me being on it and it got to a stage in their lives and my life when I’d done enough carting myself around the country. It was brilliant, but a lot of hours.”
Indeed, it is evident that property is very much a genuine passion.
From the minute we sit down at our table overlooking the river, Lucy is remarking on the lights above the bar and appraising the modern glass sliding doors with a traditional twist.
She and her husband have bought and sold a few houses themselves and she admits that friends often ask her to go around the property they are thinking of buying.
“I’m into architecture and property and how people live. I’m not an expert in that I went to university to study it, but I’m an expert in that I’ve probably been to more houses than anyone else with the job I’ve done. I loved the thrill of pulling up outside a house, meeting the couple who had just bid for it at auction. Then seeing the reveal a year later… I used to get so excited.”
Lucy went on to work on a number of shows for Channel 4, including Best of Both Worlds, Lost and Found and Bang on Budget, diversifying into the world of dogs and food.
“I’d never worked so hard,” she says.
Over the past year, Lucy has been doing up a cottage on the beach at Whitstable, buying it in the wake of her mum’s diagnosis so she could spend more time in Kent near to her parents. Showing me pictures of its shipboard exterior and stylish pale blue kitchen, Lucy explains that the project has proved a huge catharsis.
“The cottage has been my complete saviour throughout lockdown. I’ve loved doing it up and keeping busy and being by the beach has saved me. My mum encouraged me to buy it and I think even though she knew she wasn’t going to be around, she thought it would be good for me and for my dad.
“Sometimes at 7.30 in the evening, I think ‘ooh, I’ll go to the cottage’. There’s not much going on, work is slow or stopped altogether, the kids are off. So I get in my pyjamas, sweater over the top and drive down there. I get out of the car and I’m so happy to be by the sea. I dump my stuff, run to the beach and that’s my place that I talk to my mum. I just breathe and take in the sunset. Sometimes I even take a gin and tonic in a flask,” she reveals laughing.
Despite current projects being on hold, Lucy has lots of ideas going forward. She would absolutely love to go on Strictly and even quite fancies I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here “though not the eating horrible things part, obviously!”. But it is a property that still pulses passionately through her veins and her dream project, she tells me, is her own series about homes by the sea.
“That is what I’d love, love to do and now that London is starting to wake up a bit, who knows?”
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