Amanda Holden has admitted to feeling emotional over a house she and Alan Carr have been tasked with doing up due to the ‘spirits’ she suspects linger there.
Amanda & Alan’s Italian Job is back for another season, and this time they are heading for Tuscany to renovate a 17th century dilapidated building bought for one euro.
Although they knew it would need work they didn’t think it would be quite so, er, haunting, and as Alan repeated multiple times: smelly.
‘When I went inside it I fell out of love with it,’ 47-year-old Alan said, as he chose this build without having stepped through its doors. Well done, Alan.
The walls seemed to be crumbling and mouldy, while the floor was sometimes merely rubble and rocks. But that wasn’t the most unusual part.
On entering the house Amanda gasped as she saw much of the previous owner’s belongings remained there, including plates on walls, little figurines and even a passport and personal photographs.
‘It’s like miss Havisham’s just left it,’ commented the Heart Radio presenter, 52.
One particularly poignant picture saw the previous owners standing proud at the front door of the Italian home, and Amanda proclaimed she and Alan would restore it to its previous beauty as captured in the black and white snap.
‘I want to know why they left, why leave these figurines?’ asked Alan, to which Amanda responded: ‘I think there’s probably a sad story. I feel like somebody was old and lived here for ages and just died.’
Talking to the camera, she continued: ‘I feel quite emotional about this build. Because I could almost smell the history of the house, so I feel like I want to do a better job than before.
‘I want to do the spirits proud, I know that is going to make me sound like a wally.’
Earlier in the episode while studying a wardrobe Alan heard a suspicious sound coming from within.
‘Is that someone banging?’ he asked, before declaring into the ether: ‘Show us a sign that you’re here.’
A clicking noise did follow – although by the looks of the place, it could easily have been the house falling down bit by bit.
‘What’s that tapping?’ asked Amanda, alarmed, to which Alan casually responded: ‘I think it’s a ghost.’
Amanda then spoke directly to the, er, spirits, understandably unsure how to approach the situation.
‘Well honestly we’re here to do good – is what we should say? We welcome you… what do you say?’ she continued.
This comes after a spate of paranormal revelations by celebrities. On The Graham Norton Show on Friday 5 December Alan told the wild story of how he was once outed by a ouija board while with his mother.
He said – and we can’t tell if this is a joke or not – that it spelt the letters H, O, M, O. Luckily, Alan added that his mum can’t read.
This followed on from The Crown’s Dominic West casually telling the world that he once threw a kids party to get rid of a poltergeist.
‘I looked into exorcism, and it’s a real thing. It’s quite the process and you have to look into the history of the whole house and work out who might be the unsettled spirit,’ he revealed.
‘And this guy was advising and said, “Or you just have a kids party. Just get a load of kids in there and it settles the spirit and cheers everything up. One of the kids’ heads might spin around, but that’s fine,”‘ he joked.
But no, seriously.
‘So we just had a couple of parties. And it worked. So that’s how you exorcise a house. Chuck the kids in there.’
Why didn’t we think of that…?
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Amanda & Alan’s Italian Job series one is available to watch on BBC iPlayer or every Friday at 8.30pm on BBC One.
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