Everyone reacts differently to a break-up. Some mooch around the house; some get a mullet and go travelling; others buy a Porsche. If you’re a celebrity you might go in for something more extravagant – as proven by Alan Carr, comedian, host of the talk show Chatty Man and, of course, star of The Celebrity Traitors. This week, Carr announced his intention to finally move out of the house he shared with his ex-husband and trade it in for a Scottish castle.
This revelation has come as Carr was announced as the star of a new reality TV series about his mission to find his dream castle. The show is being produced by Expectation, which also makes Clarkson’s Farm and is therefore no stranger to dealing with men in the midst of a midlife crisis. The working title of the programme is, apparently ‘Castle Man’ – a missed trick if ever there was one. Given the location, ‘A Place in the Rain’ might be more appropriate, although it is hard to look past the title already suggested by some quick-witted social media users: ‘Alan Carr: Chateau Man’.
Your correspondent is eager to learn which castle Carr ends up at. Scotland has often been seen as the final refuge for those with a particularly Romantic bent – Walter Scott’s influence casts a shadow longer than perhaps it should. But as any visitor to the castles of Scotland knows, the Romance is encased in the buildings themselves. While the word ‘castle’ might conjure ideas of moats and drawbridges to those unfortunate enough to live in Norman France, in Scotland they live with turrets and crenellations more similar to those found in the work of Mervyn Peake. Rakewell suspects that this is not the effect Carr is striving for. His fancy might be caught instead by the Scots Baronial style, created by 19th-century architects taking all the features of everyone’s favourite castles – pepper-pot turrets, elaborate rooflines and sheer smooth stone – to create fantasies of castle life.
Rakewell enjoys the idea that Carr might like to try out Blair Castle in Perthshire, with its turrets and sparkling white cladding. Scots Baronial or not, it looks like something from a Disney film – apt given the series is going out on Disney+. The ‘Pink Palace’ of Drumlanrig in the south of the country, constructed in the late 17th century in rosy sandstone, could be another option, given Carr’s fondness for wearing that colour. It may well be the perfect place for him to enjoy a glass of red wine, his preferred tipple – and that of the late Queen Mother, whose days began with Dubonnet and gin at noon, red wine with lunch and then a glass of port in the afternoon. Or he could go the whole hog and settle down in the Castle of Mey near John O’Groats, which the Queen Mother bought in 1952 and turned into her holiday home.
If the northern Highlands is too chilly for Carr, he could try Manderston in the Scottish borders, which is strictly speaking a stately home rather than a castle but already has celebrity connections, having been owned for a brief time around the turn of the 19th century by one Captain Archibald Swinton, from whom the actor Tilda is descended. Nowadays the house is owned by the Palmer family, which made its fortune through the biscuit manufacturers Huntley & Palmers. That fortune paid for the standout feature of the house: the magnificent silver-plated staircase that is the only such flight in the UK.
‘He doesn’t just want to visit a castle,’ the press release for Castle Man tells us. ‘He wants to build a life in one, a leap of faith driven entirely by Alan himself.’ That last bit reads a little defensively. Was this show all Carr’s idea, or did Expectation spy an opportunity to cash in on Carr’s star turn as a traitor – the show filmed, of course, in the magnificent Ardross Castle, just north of Inverness? A loftier option for Carr would be Glamis Castle, where much of Macbeth is set. The real king Macbeth had no connection to the place, but today there is a delightful wooden carving in the grounds of the three witches, hooded and gathered round a boiling cauldron. Squint a bit, and it almost looks like Carr and his fellow traitors, conspiring together in the turret.
