First shown Monday 26th September 2016 8pm ITV1
Also shown Friday 17th March 2017 4.30pm ITV1
Duncan at home in Portugal
Famous faces revisit their
former homes to share memories and secrets from when they lived there. Businessman
Duncan Bannatyne revisits his childhood home in Clydebank to reveal how he had
his first business idea, and explains why his heart will always be in
Yorkshire.
Duncan Bannatyne is best
known for being the tough talking businessman from TV’s Dragon’s Den. In this
episode he gives viewers a tour of two of his current homes - his family home
in Yorkshire and his fabulous villa in Portugal.
Born in 1949, Duncan came
from a humble background. He grew up,
one of seven children in a council flat in Clydebank, the Scottish shipbuilding
town just west of Glasgow. His father, Bill, was a Japanese prisoner of war.
When he was released Duncan says his dad decided ‘He was going to get his own back on the Japanese by getting married and
having children and living a normal family life.’
Duncan revisits the
Clydebank childhood home he hasn’t stepped foot inside for forty years. He
remembers that it was here that he had his very first business idea. Desperate
for a paper round when none was available he knocked on doors and signed up a
hundred new customers so he could deliver papers and make some money. When his
venture paid off he had enough money to buy his whole family - six brothers and
sisters - ice creams ‘which was a great
day, great achievement’. Aged 15 he left home to join the Navy, but four
years later was dishonourably discharged (for dangling an office over a jetty)
and had to come back and live with his mum and dad and brothers and sisters in
this 3 bedroom flat.
Duncan revisits his childhood home in Clydebank, Scotland
With no references and no
job, Duncan roamed the country as an agricultural engineer repairing farm
machinery. Eventually he ended up in Jersey where he met his future wife Gail.
After 4 years in Jersey Duncan remembers reading a newspaper article about a
self made millionaire businessman (possibly Alan Sugar) and decided he and Gail
would ‘go back to England, make our
millions and start a family’.
Their start was less than
auspicious. After getting married they lodged in Gail’s sister’s spare room in
Stockton-on-Tees and got jobs in a commercial bakery, while saving up cash. In
1979 Duncan and Gail had enough for a deposit on their first house - a semi on
a new development in Stockton. There was a housing boom fuelled by plentiful
mortgages. Duncan paid £12,000, a £2,000
deposit and took a £10,000 mortgage. Duncan remembers ‘A week after getting the mortgage and buying the house, I went to a car
auction to look at cars and an ice cream van came through so I bought an ice
cream van’. If there was a single moment Duncan became an entrepreneur then
this was it.
By 1986 Duncan had built up
a lucrative fleet of five ice cream vans and could afford to move up the
property ladder. He and Gail bought a large Victorian villa in Stockton, with
plenty of parking! As he revisits this house he remembers it was here he had
his next business idea. The ice cream business was seasonal and involved very
long hours. He wanted a year-round business. ‘I was reading in the newspapers about nursing homes because Margaret
thatcher had changed the rules, so I decided to open one. I looked at a few
nursing homes where there was people living six in a room. I decided that if I
was going to build one they’d all have single bedrooms.’
Budding businessman Duncan
discovered the bank would lend him the money - but only after the nursing home
was built and fully occupied. To pay the builder he sold everything he had -
his car, his ice cream van business, and finally his house. Duncan moved his
family (he and Gail had two young daughters by this time) to a much smaller
house nearby.
Returning to his downsizer
house Duncan remembers teaching his daughter Abigail to ride a bike on the
crescent outside. Duncan says; “I know many people might think downsizing
your house is a sort of sign of failure, but in our case it wasn’t. It was a
sign of something exciting and something new that was going to happen.”
Duncan's gamble paid off - the house he bought when his nursing home business took off
Duncan’s gamble paid off.
The nursing home business was a huge success, and soon he’d built another 8
nursing homes. He could afford to move
his family to a big house in the Yorkshire countryside. There was a dining room
big enough to hold dinner parties and a large garden where he remembers
building snowmen in the winter with the children ‘I loved living in this house. I loved this house. It was a great house’.
But the pressure of business
took its toll on his marriage and he and Gail separated and then divorced in
1993. Duncan and Gail are on good terms today, and Gail’s love for this house
continues - it is still her home today.
When Duncan finally sold his
nursing home business, he personally banked £26m. He remembers; ‘I decided I wanted to do something with
that money, something for other people’. He was about to build another
home, but this time it wasn’t a business and he didn’t plan to live in it. With fellow Scot Magnus McFarlane-Barrow (now
boss of international charity Mary’s Meals) Duncan built an orphanage in
Romania. It was designed to provide a hospice for 20 orphans who were all HIV
positive. They weren’t expected to live long, but because of the care they
received there nearly all of the children did survive. He and Magnus have even
been invited to some of their weddings. Duncan says; ‘Casa Bannatyne is probably the most important home in my story
actually. It will always be part of my life, forever. It’s just a wonderful
place.’
New businesses continued to
keep Duncan busy. Today he features in the Sunday Times Rich List with an
estimated wealth of £200m generated by The Bannatyne Group chain of fitness
clubs, hotels and spas. Duncan was with second wife Joanne for 15 years, and
had two children (he has six children in total, four with Gail).
The final visit of Duncan’s
tour of his previous homes is to a flat on a prestigious development just
outside Stockton. This was the luxurious flat that became a bolthole after his
second divorce. Here he remembers receiving his divorce papers while filming on
the set of Dragon’s Den - the TV show that made him a household name.
Duncan has owned 16
different homes while he’s lived in Yorkshire. His current home is a Victorian
house in Yarm of which he says ‘I’d
probably spent 15 years looking for a house like this. I love this house, I’ll
always have this house, I’ll never ever sell it’. This house is home where
his six children and two grandchildren can visit.
Duncan also shows off his
villa in Portugal which he shares with his fiance Nigora Whitehorn. ‘An outsider might think I’m starting to slow
down and benefit from my hard work and enjoy the sunshine. And they might be
right!’
Duncan's current home in North Yorkshire
Celebrity Home Secrets: A So Television / Sunnyside Productions Co-production
Executive Producers: Graham Stuart, Andrea Miller, Jerry Foulkes
Directed and Filmed by: James Bainbridge
