Amanda Holden has admitted to becoming upset about a property she and Alan Carr have been charged with renovating owing to the ‘spirits’ she believes remain inside.
Amanda and Alan’s Italian Job is back for another season, and this time they’re off to Tuscany to rebuild a derelict 17th-century building they acquired for one euro.
Although they understood it would require effort, they didn’t expect it to be quite so, well, eerie and, as Alan repeatedly stated, stinky.
‘When I went inside it I fell out of love with it,’ Alan said, as he chose this build without having stepped through its doors. Well done, Alan.
The walls appeared to be decaying and mouldy, and the floor was occasionally just debris and pebbles. But it wasn’t the strangest thing.
Amanda exclaimed when she entered the property and saw many of the former owner’s things, including dishes on the walls, little figurines, and even a passport and personal pictures.
‘It’s like miss Havisham’s just left it,’ commented the Heart Radio presenter, 52.
Amanda stated she and Alan would restore the Italian villa to its prior splendour, as recorded in a sad black and white photograph of the previous owners standing proudly at the front entrance.
‘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.’
Alan detected a weird sound coming from within a closet earlier in the episode while investigating it.
‘Is that someone banging?’ he asked, before declaring into the ether: ‘Show us a sign that you’re here.’
A clicking noise followed, however given the state of the area, it may easily have been the home crumbling piece by bit.
‘What’s that tapping?’ asked Amanda, alarmed, too which Alan casually responded: ‘I think it’s a ghost.’
Amanda then addressed the, well, ghosts directly, naturally apprehensive on how to approach the matter.
‘Well honestly we’re here to do good – is what we should say? We welcome you… what do you say?’ she continued.
This follows a string of paranormal revelations by celebrities. Alan shared the strange incident of being outed by a ouija board while with his mother on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, December 5th.
He stated – and we’re not sure whether this is a joke – that it spelt the letters H, O, M, O. Fortunately, Alan noted that his mother cannot read.
This came after The Crown’s Dominic West casually revealed 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…?
Amanda & Alan’s Italian Job series one is available to watch on BBC iPlayer or every Friday at 8.30pm on BBC One.