Ruth Watson (Country House Rescue) Interview
Ruth Watson must strike fear into hoteliers everywhere. The woman who presented two series of The Hotel Inspector, in which she took slovenly hotel standards to task, is sitting in a room at an exclusive London hotel. Outside the door, staff are frantically hoovering, dusting and cleaning in the corridor. Whether this is the norm, or anxious management have sent them down to make an impression, is difficult to say.
Not that they need to worry. Watson is The Hotel Inspector no longer. Not for the first time in her varied and successful career, she's reinvented herself. Her latest role sees her presenting Channel 4's new series, Country House Rescue, in which she visits some of the most beautiful private houses in the country to help the owners hang on to, and make the most of, their properties.
Here, above the muffled sound of urgent vacuuming, she reveals why she'd had her fill of inspecting hotels, how she is perfectly suited to her new role, and what it's like to have an argument on national television.
You've been described as a restaurateur, hotelier, writer, cook and TV presenter. What do you see as your main career?
Restaurateur. But it is difficult. I really love food, so I indulge that by selling it to people in a restaurant, but I do love writing about it as well. I would say my raison d'etre is all to do with food. My mother was exceptionally odd for her era, someone who really cared about food. We didn't have cars, we didn't have central heating, we didn't have holidays, we didn't have anything, but we had fantastic food. Everything got spent on food, so I've always had an expectation of eating well.
Of everything you've done in all these fields, what are you most proud of?
Winning awards for food writing. That and my horse winning at Sandown - watching him coming up the final stretch - God it was good!
Running your own hotel and restaurant must be incredibly hard work. With you having other projects, do you ever worry that the quality might suffer in your absence?
Absolutely. But we do have an extremely good team. Most of the people who work for us in managerial positions have worked for us for a very long time. We have a very stable team, particularly for catering. Everything runs really smoothly both in the kitchen and the hotel when I'm away. What doesn't happen when I'm not there is innovation, actually changing things. So it's very important that we film in batches, so I can go back to work between times, which enables me to pick up threads. I know the business would be fine without me - if I never went back it would be very good - but who knows? The attention to detail wouldn't be quite as acute.
You've got a brand new series! What's it about?
The premise of it is helping people generate enough income to maintain and repair and live in and enjoy their stately homes. Whether they've inherited or bought them, people have great difficulties in conjuring up enough money to keep them, and it's becoming tougher and tougher, which is why so many houses get bought by the Russian oligarchy or go to the National Trust. How we help them differs enormously from case to case, there's a lot of variation in what we do. Sometimes they're already on the right track, and we just need to tweak what they're doing. Other times they've got it completely wrong, and we have to make major, major changes. Our priority is to protect the house, to make sure it doesn't fall into disrepair, but also to help the people living in them stay where they are. People assume they're all extremely wealthy if they live in these houses, but the ones in this series aren't. A lot f them are land rich but cash poor.
Is the series about the people as well as the houses?
Oh yes, it's very much about the characters. Everything that makes television interesting is about people. At the end of the day, yes, they're beautiful houses beautifully shot (in high definition) and really lovely to look at, so there's a degree of 'country house porn' involved. But it would be nothing without the individual characters, and the characters are, almost without exception, very intriguing. And there will be people behaving totally eccentrically and totally stroppily, which is always really fun. And we get access to people the like of which you never normally see on TV. For those of us who don't live in those rarefied circles, it's fascinating. I think people will really enjoy the eccentricity on display.
Why are you the right person to help these people?
Because I have actually lived that life. We ran a restaurant and hotel at Hintlesham Hall. It was a very large, Grade One listed building. We've had to caretake fabulous buildings with huge architectural problems, and we've had to make a business out of them. We are landowners, so we understand about farming and things like that. We understand the problems of having these houses and the land, and about employing staff. We have business skills - I say 'we' because my husband is a business consultant on the series as well, behind the scenes. I don't think there's been one instance where I haven't thought 'I completely understand what this problem is.' I understand all of it - whether they listen to me or not I another matter.
Have you always had a passion for country houses?
I love architecture. I love cities as well as the countryside, but I do really like property and design. I'm fairly well-informed about things of this ilk.
Do you have a favourite country house style?
My favourite style of architecture is Georgian - which is hardly rare, it's a huge cliché. I like the proportions of the rooms, and the feeling that even when it's done on a huge scale, there's a feeling of domesticity about it.
What were your favourite houses in the series?
Well, having said all of that, one of the most beautiful houses I saw was medieval, and just lovely. It reminds me of driving through Burgundy or somewhere, as if you see from afar a set of beautiful red roofs and they're all interlocking and there are courtyards. I thought it was very un-English, and really, really charming. And I loved the garden there.
How do you go about getting to know the house and the owners and the issues and problems?
We simply go to the house, we talk to them at length, and we walk around. It's an act of consultancy, really, and the cameras just happen to be there. And we didn't just discuss financial problems. We also addressed problems within the family unit, whether it was who was going to inherit or who would do the work, or if someone wasn't pitching in enough. That's what made it so intriguing. You start off with a house and a financial issue, and you end up with a much more complex human story.
How did you decide which houses to feature?
We went directly to some houses, and we also put an editorial piece in Country Life encouraging people to get in touch with us if they wanted to take part, which proved very fruitful. Everyone who has a country house seems to get Country Life, which normally then ends up sitting in their bathrooms. And one person came directly to me through my website, having heard I was making this series.
Did you seek external expert advice at times during the series?
Absolutely. I think one would be very unintelligent if one thought one knew everything about everything. I got people in, sometimes to endorse what I knew was right, to convince the protagonist, to add weight to what I was saying. At other times, we got local expertise in - for example, people who had opened their garden to the public, to show that it could be done in that area. Or the guy in Scotland who wanted to set up a brewery, we went to a microbrewery for advice. I wouldn't have a clue about setting up a brewery! The woman there was very, very sensible, and we conveyed back the information, which he ignored. And we had the woman who designed Babington House and Soho House come in and talk to one of the protagonists about how he might do his interior decoration for accommodation.
What kind of solutions do you come up with?
Very varied ones, and often it was just a matter of helping them out with ideas of their own. One was a cookery school, but he wanted to put it in an old stable block, which would've been a huge problem. And he wanted to do long courses right from the start, and we felt he should start with much shorter courses. So in cases like that, it was just guidance.
Did you have some fairly hefty confrontations?
Yes. Normally with women, which is natural, because middle aged women tend to dislike other middle aged women. But one of them was resolved very amicably, and I'm very fond of her. And then another person who I don't think will ever recover from our intrusion. But we did have three or four emails from people who were very grateful for our help, even if they'd found it quite painful.
Do we get to find out the degree of success in each case?
I think we've got a fair indication. I think we've been able to prove almost conclusively that by doing this rather than that you have a far greater chance of success. I think in all instances there has been some significant, demonstrable change. We were there at each house for six months, and at the end, you got a good idea, from the people and from what was happening in each instance, as to how well it had gone.
Country House Rescue is on Channel 4 from Tuesday December 9 at 9pm.
