<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div><div><div><p>Dick and Angel Strawbridge had a lifestyle in mind when they dreamt of moving to France. “We said, ‘What we need is a nice little cottage in a village. We’ll pootle along to the boulangerie, come back with baguettes and croissants.’ It started off very simple,” Dick recalls. “Then it got less simple as the house got bigger”.</p><p>If you have watched <em>Escape to the Chateau</em>, the hit television series, you will know just how much bigger it got. The couple bought Chateau de la Motte Husson, a fairy-tale castle in the Loire, in 2015. Forty-five rooms, 12 acres, seven outbuildings and a moat – all for £280,000 – where they now live with their children Arthur, 12, and Dorothy, 11. “The fact that this chateau is less than the price of a bedsit anywhere in east London is the bit it’s hard to get your head around,” says Dick.</p><p>The catch? The place had no electricity, plumbing or heating. The lavatory emptied into the moat. The survey was “200 pages of reasons not to buy a house”. At the time of purchase, the Strawbridges had a baby and a toddler, and their grasp of French was rudimentary. But over the course of a decade, in a transformation followed by Channel 4 through nine series, they turned the chateau into a fabulous and quirky family home. “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” says Angel.</p></div></div><div><div><p><em>Escape to the Chateau</em> was sold to 75 countries and spawned books, tours and merchandise (229 products currently listed on their website, from scented candles to oven gloves), while the Strawbridges also ran the property as a wedding venue in the summer months.</p><p>And then, in 2023, it turned sour.</p><p>Channel 4 announced that it was cutting ties with the couple after an investigation into their conduct. A leaked recording featured Angel calling a producer a “f----d-up little c---”, and saying: “My husband speaks to everyone when he’s grumpy like a piece of s---.” They were accused of being bullies. This was all so at odds with their public image – the jolly, welcoming Strawbridges, always with a smile on their faces – that it was shocking.</p><p>Eighteen months on, and I’m at the chateau to hear about the couple’s impending return to TV. They are picking up where they left off, preparing to launch the 10th series on a channel which is yet to be announced officially, but which is emphatically not Channel 4.</p><p>What a place: the Willy Wonka-esque tubular lift going up through the turret, the stuffed wolf on the landing, the vintage wallpaper, the pantry of dreams. Descend the front steps, cross the moat and wander out past the newly renovated piggery into the walled garden, where an art deco swimming pool is taking shape. From the outside, the house is like something from Disney’s <em>Beauty and the Beast</em>. Inside, it is surprisingly cosy. A fire is warming the salon, where Petale the Kerry blue terrier pads around and a beautifully decorated Christmas tree stands beside the piano. “It doesn’t feel ostentatious or overbearing. It feels like a home,” says Angel.</p></div></div><div><div><p>When they embarked upon their search for a French home in 2014, with a TV crew in tow, the production company had doubts. “They wanted jeopardy, they wanted drama, and we said, ‘There’s not going to be any,’” says Dick. “Because if a problem comes into our world, we fix it and move on. They tried to construct it in the early days, and we had to be really robust. That was a difficult period to begin with, because we had one senior producer say, ‘I will eat my hat if anybody watches this without a lot of jeopardy.’”</p><p>The couple simply got on with things. Angel, who runs a 1940s-themed hospitality business called The Vintage Patisserie, has an eye for design (and a background in chartered accountancy). Dick, a former lieutenant colonel with a distinguished record in the Royal Corps of Signals before becoming what he jokingly calls a “telly tart”, has the practical know-how.</p><p>In all, renovations have cost €700,000 (£613,000), a sizeable portion of that spent on a new roof. People think they must have been paid a lot by Channel 4, but Angel says they took only a nominal presenting fee and funded the work themselves. They preferred it that way because they could retain more control. “We still read that the channel paid for a lot of the renovations, and that’s an absolute myth. The show gradually got more successful, but we only started getting real money much later on. I cannot tell you how crazy those first few years were. We were hand to mouth.”</p><p>The key to <em>Escape to the Chateau</em>’s appeal, Dick and Angel believe, is that it’s nice. “People come up in tears and hug us, saying we’ve helped them through difficult periods. You don’t get all anxious and uptight watching our programme, Dick says.</p><p>In person, they are as chatty and friendly as they appear on screen. They make an eye-catching couple: Angel, 47, with her flame-red hair and colourful kimonos; Dick, 66, resplendent with bushy beard and walrus moustache. They were introduced at a party in 2010 by their mutual agent, who first met Dick when he took part in the Channel 4 show <em>Scrapheap Challenge</em> in 1998, and began representing Angel after she appeared on <em>Dragons’ Den</em>.</p><p>He calls her by her real name, Angela. “Gorgeous and lovely. I think the lovely bit is more important than the gorgeous,” says Dick, when I ask for his first impressions of her. “I was the upside of 50. I didn’t know what age Angela was, and all I did was look between her eyes, because with the cleavage and the red lippy, a chap has to behave himself! Her smile has always been the thing that I find most attractive. So I fell straight away.”</p><p>Arthur was born in 2013, Dorothy the following year, while the family was living in Southend, Essex. All the while, they were searching for their perfect French property and in 2015, after four years of looking, they found it.</p></div></div><div><div><p>Having moved in, they immediately made an effort with the locals, throwing open the gates for parties and taking part in village life. Nobody here thinks of them as television stars. “We’re just the people who bought the house that nobody wanted, and they’re so pleased about that,” says Dick.</p><p>They set about renovating the chateau bit by bit, the cameras ever present. The first series culminated with their own wedding. It wasn’t quite a fly-on-the-wall show, because filming was restricted to what the Strawbridges wanted to show, but their family vibe – much laughter and bonhomie – was at its heart.</p><p>The first blip came in 2021 when a newspaper story popped up alleging that, in the early series, the couple had created a “toxic” work environment. Unnamed sources claimed that they had been “aggressive, abusive and bullying”. Their representative denied the allegations, the story didn’t create much of a ripple, and Channel 4 stuck by them. A new production company was brought in.</p><p>In 2022, the couple decided to pause <em>Escape to the Chateau</em>, saying they wanted to give Arthur and Dorothy some breathing space. “The children didn’t want to stop. They were happy as Larry. But we wanted to make sure they had the opportunity to go through adolescence and have a little bit of privacy until they’d made the transition to senior school,” explains Dick. The ninth series aired in October of that year, with other Channel 4 projects in the works, including <em>Secret France with Dick and Angel</em>. “We finished <em>Escape </em>on a complete and utter high,” says Angel.</p><p>Then, in May 2023, it was reported that the second production company had also raised concerns about the couple’s behaviour. Channel 4 released a one-line statement: “Following a review, we have taken the decision not to work with Dick and Angel on any new productions in the future.” A week later, the secret recording of Angel was leaked online.</p><p>The Strawbridges did not respond at the time, except to insist that there are two sides to every story. Today, they give their version of events.</p></div></div><div><div><p>“We had different creative visions,” Angel begins, cautiously, when I ask about the breakdown of relations with their first production company. “It wasn’t so much creative visions, but the way they behaved,” Dick interjects. Of the leaked recording, Angel says there was an “unpleasant person” on the crew whom she asked to leave the house. Dick steps in: “The unpleasant person who deliberately provoked you and deliberately recorded you.” Angel thinks with hindsight that the recording was “very set up. It just came out of the blue. We were filming upstairs and he came up in a very aggressive manner and was just in my face”.</p><p>Relations with this particular crew member had broken down, she says, claiming that he had upset the chateau team – a handful of people who are employed at the house, helping with the cleaning, gardening and general maintenance – and the children, and that she had discovered he was creating “weird art” which mocked her husband.</p><p>She is not proud of swearing at him. “In hindsight, I wish I’d done it in a calmer way, and I’m not that sort of person – we don’t go around screaming and shouting at people. It was an isolated incident… I lost my temper at someone, and I think any human being probably would have done the same.”</p><p>Why does she think he targeted her and not Dick? “Because I’m gentle. Dick would have chucked him out immediately.”</p></div></div><div><div><p>The Channel 4 findings about their alleged behaviour concerned a spin-off show made with an unfamiliar crew, they say, not the main <em>Escape to the Chateau </em>series. This is backed up by Jonathan Hales, a producer-director who has worked on the show for several years and is sticking with them for the new series – he insists that the Strawbridges are not bullies, and considers himself to be almost a member of the family now.</p><p>But the couple claim that the broadcaster has refused to tell them exactly what they are supposed to have done. “A review took place that we never got told anything about. We had one interview with someone who didn’t ask us any questions. We never heard what we were accused of and why they didn’t want to work with us,” says Dick. “In no other industry could someone find you guilty and say, ‘We’re not working with you anymore’, and put out this hyperbole about how terrible we must be, without actually allowing us to have some answers.” The investigation is “hidden behind a wall of confidentiality”, says Angel.</p><p>Channel 4 declined to comment but is understood to dispute the Strawbridges’ version of events.</p><p>Angel is on the point of tears as she speaks about the broadcaster, saying its terse statement caused rumours to spread. Dick feels similarly aggrieved. “It was a very negative statement that had a real, detrimental effect on the way we were perceived,” he says.</p><p>“People think, because we said nothing, that there’s a body in the moat.”</p><p>He wonders now if the couple should have come out swinging, but “we didn’t want to turn it into a slanging match” and damage the show’s legacy. He suggests that the recording was leaked because their decision to step back had killed the golden goose. “You’ve got to remember that we have been very good for the production companies we’ve worked through. We’ve serviced the beast for advertisers. When you say you’re pausing, people don’t like it.”</p><p>When I ask how he felt to see Angel at the centre of a media storm, he replies: “The people who have behaved so poorly and so shoddily, and done it on purpose… I come from a place where natural justice comes through in the end.”</p><p>Throughout it all, viewers stuck by them, constantly asking when the show would be coming back. “It really moved us, how much support there was,” says Angel. They have a devoted fanbase. They have received nearly 300,000 emails over the years. An upstairs corridor is lined with artwork which viewers have sent in, depicting the family and the chateau: oil paintings, cross-stitch, watercolours and dolls.</p></div></div><div><div><p>And, in an unscheduled interruption to our visit, two such fans arrive at the door. A smiling couple drive up to the chateau and tell a staff member that they’re here to check in. “Oh, no. This happens a lot,” winces Angel, as we peer out through the window. The couple booked to stay at Chateau de la Motte – except they haven’t looked closely at the website they used, because there are other chateaux in France with the same name, and the one they have actually booked is a four-hour drive away.</p><p>When they are given this bad news, the woman bursts into tears. Her dejected partner loads the bags back into the car. Dick goes out to explain their mistake, Angel offers them a hug and a selfie and asks someone to give them a chateau-shaped Christmas tree decoration as a consolation, and then Dick strides off with us in tow to tour the walled garden, waving them a brisk goodbye. We never find out if they drove on to the other, less glamorous, Chateau de la Motte, or whether they turned around and went home again.</p></div></div><div><div><p>It’s sad that the disorientated couple never got to experience it, but the Strawbridges are perfect hosts. Tea on a tray with china cups when we arrive, patisserie cakes served up in the afternoon. Lunch is taken at a kitchen table groaning with local produce: baguettes, tomatoes, charcuterie and cheese, homemade chutneys, chicken <em>rillettes</em>, soup made from a butternut squash which, Dick tells me, was picked from the garden only this morning. And a jar of chilli jam, professionally packaged, made by budding chef Arthur.</p><p>We stay until teatime so that we can meet Arthur – already overtaking his dad in height – and Dorothy, when they return from school. Both are bilingual, amiable and creditably polite. Angel’s cheerful parents, Jenny and Steve, who live in converted stables in the grounds, pop in to say hello.</p><p>The children are allowed screen time, but there is an emphasis here on old-fashioned, outdoor fun. “Yesterday afternoon, Arthur came back from school, went out to the marshes, beat things with sticks and built things,” Dick says proudly. “That’s what I remember from when I grew up in the Sixties. We used to go off and get dirty.”</p><p>The catalyst for the upcoming series 10 was Dorothy asking to have her own room, having previously shared with her brother. “All of a sudden we were like, ‘This is the right time,’” says Angel. The bedroom move forms part of the new series. There will be four episodes, with Tracy-Ann Oberman continuing as narrator. This time, they have formed their own company to produce it.</p><p>On the drive back to our hotel, Dick talks about his background – born in Burma, where his father worked in the oil business; schooled in Northern Ireland; attended Sandhurst; 22 years in the Army, including 10 in counterterrorism; and then a troubleshooter for a multinational. His childhood and his Army background were all about “doing things properly and doing them well”, he says, and he expects that from others. And I wonder if this was at the root of some of the on-set problems and the split with Channel 4: a generational divide between an ex-military man with exacting standards, and the younger people who populate the TV industry and have different ideas of what constitutes a stressful situation.</p><p>The couple will unveil series 10 in the new year. Series 11 is already being planned. They speak about the “chateau brand”, and a return to television will undoubtedly help to keep that going. But they are at pains to say that it remains a family home above all else. “This is not a television construct,” says Dick. “It’s our life.”</p><p><em>To find out more about Escape to the Chateau’s return, visit </em><em>thechateau.tv</em></p></div></div></div></div></div>

<p>Dick and Angel Strawbridge, known for "Escape to the Chateau," were cut off by Channel 4 after accusations of bullying. Despite their public image, leaked recordings revealed Angel's offensive remarks. The couple is set to return to TV with a new series, not on Channel 4, continuing their chateau renovations and lifestyle.</p>

Dick and Angel Strawbridge: ‘Channel 4 never told us what we were accused of’