A permanently-single friend of mine lived with his mum and dad until, on his 40th birthday, they gave him a cheque for £40,000 with the words that it was to help him buy a place of his own.
When you’ve all been under the same roof for four decades I guess subtlety becomes superfluous.
My friend (and Susan Boyle) apart, most of us will flee the nest at some point, so Watch’s new pilot show Honey, I Bought The House had universal appeal in its favour.
It gave a young couple, in this case Chris and Charley from Hertfordshire, £15,000 towards getting on to the property ladder. But this being reality TV they wanted some suffering for their money so only one of the pair was going to have a say in the purchase and if the other half didn’t like the house they chose, they’d have to give the money back.
According to friend Mike, Chris wore the trousers in the relationship but Charley used the belt to beat him, which added an unexpected air of menace to Chris being in the role of purchaser.
Neither of them were particularly realistic about house buying. Charley wanted a place that matched her choice of dcor and would have somewhere to put her teapot collection, her teddy bears and her niece.
Chris, meanwhile, contemplated whether to put in a £160,000 offer on the first property he saw, a bid which matched the asking price!
Thankfully, Chris had one thing going for him the programme’s format. For some reason they made the couple spend three weeks apart, a period which included Charley’s birthday.
This made her so emotional I think she would have been happy had Chris chosen a shed at the bottom of someone’s garden if it meant seeing him again.
So the two-bedroom flat he settled on was “ideal” although knowing £15,000 was at stake must have fixed a grin on her face as well.
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