Ambitious Kate Lawler’s winnings from Big Brother were always going straight into property, says Jill Parsons of The Sunday Times
When Kate Lawler walked out triumphant from the Big Brother house in July 2002, clutching a cheque for £70,000, she had already planned exactly what to do with it. For her, the win did not herald an endless spree at designer shops or expensive holidays. Instead, she put on a hard hat and took a trip round a building site in her native Beckenham, southeast London, having decided to use the money to take her first step on the property ladder.
“It felt strange standing in the middle of a pile of bricks with someone pointing out that the living room was here and the bathroom there,” Lawler says. “I came down a few months later and the building itself was finished, although it was still just rough concrete without any finishing touches. At that point, I started to feel very excited about having a place of my own.”
Lawler describes herself as impulsive, but given that she is only just 25 and is deftly handling a range of television, radio and DJing jobs, she appears to have a remarkably sensible head on her slim shoulders. It helps that her close family — mum, dad, two sisters and a brother — all live nearby, and Beckenham, a leafy suburb straddling London and Kent, is a place she knows like the back of her hand.
The site of her apartment block was part of Wellcome Laboratories when she was a child and she played in the grounds and messed around by the lake that gives the flats their waterside views. She attended the nearby girls’ school and had returned home to live with her parents just before filling in the Big Brother forms that changed the course of her life.
One of the big attractions of Lawler’s new flat, for which she paid £320,000 in 2003, was the security of the gated, guarded complex, given that she was recognised wherever she went, had acquired a high-profile footballer boyfriend, Jonathan Woodgate — now her ex — and had even attracted a stalker. Although, as Lawler points out: “I had this huge, muscled personal instructor when I was training for the boxercise DVD that I produced to shift all the weight I put on in Big Brother, and he made it through unquestioned by just saying he was a friend of mine, so it’s never foolproof.”
She kept the decor simple, choosing cream carpets, pale tiles and inlaid wooden doors for the fitted wardrobes and cupboards. “Buying off-plan meant that I could choose the look of the place, including the bathroom and kitchen fittings.”
Living alone, she used the second bedroom as a dressing room. While the main bedroom was cool and muted, she used the dressing room to indulge her girlie side.
“I filled it with lots of pink, including a big, pink picture of Audrey Hepburn,” Lawler says. “I deliberately made the living room a lot less female, with plain leather sofas from Sofa Workshop on Tottenham Court Road.”
It was fortunate that she chose the pale and plain fixtures and fittings that make the perfect rental property: within months of moving into her dream home, she was bowled over by a flat in the next block. “They are bigger, with open, light living areas. I walked into the show flat and had to have it. When I told my dad, he sighed a bit and reminded me that I had just bought this one. But I persuaded him that I could rent out the first and afford the second. I paid £345,000 for the second flat and £30,000 for everything in it — and it’s been a brilliant place for parties.”
Since May 2004, she has been living in her new rock-chick pad while renting out the first flat to a friend of a friend. During that time, she has had a stint as a DJ at Capital FM, a short-lived run as a presenter of the Channel 4 breakfast show RI:SE and reached the semi-finals of ITV’s Celebrity Wrestling.
Now she is planning to spend more time as a club DJ, she has put the first flat on the market at £320,000 to slash her mortgage on the second. “If I can reduce my bills, I can be more flexible,” she says. “I’m a single girl in an industry where there are not many women, and I’ve got to make the most of my opportunities.”
Lawler’s flat is for sale for £320,000 with Andrew Reeves, 020 8658 2566,
http://www.andrewreeves.co.uk http://www.katelawler.net
