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‘Losing the business was tough to swallow. Being paid for advising people on buying property was the only revenue stream and when that tap got switched off there was nowhere to hide. One imagines it was Phil who nonplussed Kirstie two years ago, when his homefinder business Garrington, which had four offices and employed 30 people, went bust owing more than £500,000. On the other, it does cause difficulties because I don’t have a clue what she’s going to do from one sequence to the next!’ On the one hand, that’s great because it brings spontaneity to proceedings – even a magic. ‘She hates being prepared and dislikes even discussing a sequence before we shoot it,’ says Phil. Phil likes to prepare, working with the producer, director and cameraman, ‘brainstorming it and working out what we are trying to get out of the sequence we are about to shoot.’ Kirstie does none of this. The cameras are on us 24/7, focusing on our reaction to one another – the tetchiness, the laughs – and also on what is put before us, in terms of the vacation.’Īnd it’s the tension between them that still makes good TV. ‘All the mischief we got up to used to be cut out of our shows,’ says Phil, ‘but here it’s included. The new show sees them heading to holiday locations such as Croatia, Morocco, Italy and Ibiza in search of the best deals at both ends of the budget spectrum. We used to do it a lot more, but we then had children.’ But as a foursome, we socialise only occasionally now. It might be different if I were coming home from work and saying to my wife, “Let’s go round to Kirstie’s” or “Let’s have dinner with her and Ben on Saturday night”, because then it might get a bit too much.
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‘Both our partners are strong, confident people and know that we are friends and business partners, but no more. ‘It’s never been an issue – it’s never even prompted a question,’ insists Phil. Some partners might get a tad jealous at their other halves having such a close relationship with someone they work with, especially when that work entails trips to romantic destinations like The Maldives. I also lived through some of her earlier romantic upsets. I was the first person to know about Kirstie’s partner Ben – she told me all about him on a long drive down to Somerset. ‘We share large parts of one another’s lives. When we are filming for television, we spend more time with each other than we do with our respective partners. Dishing the dirt: Phil says that Kirstie's spontaneity when filming brings a 'magic' to proceedings