Nothing. I mean, nobody\u2019s got anything in their wallet any more. I took my grandson to get kebabs on Saturday \u2014 talk about living the high life. Although, just so you know, we had a fully laid table: folded napkins, candleware, candles all lit. We might eat slummy, but we always lay posh.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the guy said it\u2019s cash only. I looked in my wallet and literally didn\u2019t recognise what was in there. It turned out to be euros and a Malaysian ringgit. My wallet is full of receipts and membership cards for private members\u2019 clubs I no longer go to. It\u2019s perfectly useless.<\/p>\n
Which credit cards do you use?<\/p>\n
My banking trajectory sounds tragic. It started off with Drummonds off Trafalgar Square, where you went to see the bank manager and had a glass of sherry and there was a lot of wood panelling. Then we moved to Coutts, then to Handelsbanken, and now I\u2019m with something called Geezer or Boozer or something. Monzo? Yes, it could be that.<\/p>\n
It has no bank manager and no actual corporeal existence, just this unbelievably retina-churning coloured card, which isn\u2019t a credit card. It\u2019s the most ungentlemanly thing in the world, because you\u2019re only allowed to spend the money that you\u2019ve got. How am I supposed to run up tailors\u2019 bills like the Regency fop I am if I can only spend money I\u2019ve got?<\/p>\n
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Llewelyn-Bowen, left, with the cast of Changing Rooms: Andy Kane, Linda Barker, Carol Smillie, Graham Wynne and Anna Ryder Richardson<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
Are you a spender or saver?<\/p>\n
I always thought I was a complete splurger, but without a credit card it turns out I\u2019m actually quite parsimonious. It was kind of a midlife crisis when I suddenly worked out that I wasn\u2019t a Cavalier \u2014 I was a Roundhead in Cavalier clothing. So being on the Binza Bonza thing, I do check now to see how much money I\u2019ve got rather than just sort of blarting out, \u201cCharge it, rub it in tissue paper, sprinkle it with rose petals and have it delivered\u201d.<\/p>\n
Do you have a money weakness?<\/p>\n
Thirty, forty years ago, I had all the time in the world, all the health in the world, all the hair in the world. Then at 61 you suddenly realise that actually you are on a bit of a countdown clock. There\u2019s a moment when you sit down with all these financial advisers and they say: we can guarantee the kind of lifestyle you\u2019ve got for 20 years. So basically, I\u2019ve got to die at 81 or else I\u2019m going to be in total Jane Austen penury.<\/p>\n
The years of splurging and \u201cwe\u2019ll fly first class to Barbados\u201d are long gone. I knocked off the shopping addiction in lockdown. Before then, you\u2019d have a good lunch, then trawl through Burlington Arcade and have three of those, one of those and one of those, just because you could.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s been your most extravagant purchase?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been an unbelievably, catastrophically generous present buyer. I was always very good at just deciding that what Mrs Llewelyn-Bowen needed more than anything was a new Stephen Jones Millinery hat just because it was Tuesday. My suits cost about a grand, which I still think is extremely good value. My Cotswolds tailor, Barrington Ayre in Cirencester, shimmies them up for me. This one I\u2019m wearing today was made in 2020, I think, so it\u2019s got a good six years on it. It may have been let out slightly \u2014 it\u2019s terrible the way suits shrink at the dry cleaners\u2026<\/p>\n
What was your first job?<\/p>\n
Being paid by a relative who worked at the American embassy to escort high-born American girls around London when I was 16 or 17. I\u2019d take them to the cinema, to a club, they\u2019d come back rather wide-eyed. From then, I found myself jobs: I sold rugs in Liberty, hats in Harvey Nichols, I sold Monty Don\u2019s jewellery in Harrods before he reincarnated himself as a gardener.<\/p>\n
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At home in 1998<\/p>\n
TV TIMES\/FUTURE PUBLISHING VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
I trained as a fine artist and had my own design business. I spent most of the late Eighties and early Nineties doing the most extraordinarily intricate things to very wealthy ladies\u2019 boudoirs in Knightsbridge. Then I got picked up by the BBC and foisted into television stardom, and my earnings went through the floor. You got paid virtually nothing and were put in a minicab after making the most-watched programme on BBC1, meanwhile my Lady de Snottys couldn\u2019t bear the idea of me turning up smelling of celebrity. So I had an earnings crisis.<\/p>\n
Are you better off than your parents?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no \u201cI was born in the gutter and dragged myself up\u201d, I just had the most unbelievably middle-class upbringing. It was all a bit tragic in that my father died when I was nine and my mother had multiple sclerosis, but even within the confines of that, I just remember a very ordinary, happy, oatmeal childhood surrounded by furniture from John Lewis.<\/p>\n
My father was an eminent surgeon, but was diagnosed with leukaemia and died very quickly. I don\u2019t know how my mother managed because it was before the days of big life insurance payouts. But she was a very smart woman. We didn\u2019t have frills like everybody else did \u2014 we didn\u2019t have a car or really ever go on holiday \u2014 but the groceries would be delivered from Peter Jones.<\/p>\n
We must have been unbelievably strapped for cash but it\u2019s something that I never felt or really registered. So, yes, much, much wealthier than my parents.<\/p>\n
Do you own a property?<\/p>\n
Yes. I inherited a share in the house and we used that to buy our first flat in Streatham with a very small mortgage when we were about 24.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when times were quite tough. I had a job in manufacturing at Harefield rubber factory and Jackie was working for Admiral Crichton, organising parties. I\u2019d be going out at six in the morning just as she was coming home from Belgravia with armfuls of tuberoses, boxes of cigars and bottles of Courvoisier and goodness knows what.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\/a870f8a3-4b13-4027-a462-147bb84946a1.jpg\")
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The Llewelyn-Bowen manor house in Siddington near Cirencester<\/p>\n
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n
It was a very charming, beautiful mansion flat. I think it was about 60 grand, but we made a loss of about 10 grand when we sold it. Then we bought a very ugly bungalow in Blackheath on Shooters Hill Road for \u00a3129,000 and sold it for something ridiculous like \u00a3400,000 three years later.<\/p>\n
We moved to a lovely house in Greenwich which we bought for about \u00a3700,000 and sold for \u00a31.2 million. Then we moved to Gloucestershire, to our manor house. We spent less than \u00a31.2 million on that and I think its current valuation is around the \u00a33 million mark. We also have an apartment in Cornwall, which I think we paid \u00a3124,000 for and its current valuation is about \u00a3800,000.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re the last generation to be able to say that. Nobody else is going to be able to make those enormous leaps in the property market. But we were never propelled by money \u2014 we would look at a house, love it, not be sure we can afford it, and think, oh f**k it, we\u2019ll find a way.<\/p>\n
Do you save into a pension?<\/p>\n
We did and we ended up cashing them in. Now we\u2019re looking at how we can do things so we don\u2019t end up with an enormous bill should we decide to identify as dead. <\/p>\n
What is better for retirement \u2014 property or pension?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s whatever you want. I think the most important thing for retirement is to be as much you as possible. Jackie\u2019s always said the big thing about getting older is that you\u2019ve got to ensure you don\u2019t stop being brave.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s been your most lucrative work?<\/p>\n
It was after my Changing Rooms earning crisis, when Jackie came up with the fabulous idea of a business based on licensing, which is what we\u2019ve been doing ever since. It would have been an easy fix to slap the LLB name and my gurning face on any product from bath mats to dandruff shampoo, but I\u2019ve always been rather old fashioned about wanting my Licensed brand to properly reflect my design DNA. So over the last 25+ years working with companies like Next, Littlewoods or John Lewis, if it says LLB on the label then it\u2019s spent time on my drawing board.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the thing that\u2019s put the Prada shoes on the children\u2019s feet and paid the Marlborough school fees. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m quite choosy about the product alignments I get involved with because I take it as a bit of responsibility. I can remember early on being bullied by an advertising agency to get involved in a project, which I flatly turned down. I had them ringing over a weekend, literally trying to smear pounds all over me and I still said no. Everybody thought I was quite, quite mad.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m working with World of Warcraft now and a lot of the players watched Changing Rooms 30 years ago, so there\u2019s something charmingly surreal about finding me there encouraging them to customise their in-game abode. It\u2019s raised my stock immeasurably with my nine-year-old grandson and, weirdly, with Countess Bathurst, who occupies the stately home next door to us. She\u2019s a fan of Warcraft, so now sees me in a glamorous blood elf kind of light.<\/p>\n
![\"Laurence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\/cfa5912c-ef1b-405d-82bb-a6046cc79308.jpg\")
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