The truth about 'broke' Rosie

She is the "impoverished" ex-BBC star who claims her life has been overwhelmed by debt.

Rosie Millard told this week how she struggles to cope with frozen bank accounts and £40,000 of credit-card borrowings. Even the family car has had to be sold to raise cash.

Yet the Evening Standard can reveal that the flamboyant former arts correspondent and her husband are sitting on a large property empire.

We traced homes in London which are worth more than ?2million - and the couple also have a flat in Paris.

Their properties are:

Mother-of-four Ms Millard described how her finances ran out of control when the couple were unable to sell the Hackney house last summer.

They were forced to hold on to the house - which she called "Millard Towers I" - and rent it out.

She and her TV producer husband Pip Clothier had already spent £698,000 buying their dilapidated "dream home" in Islington. Their plan to spend £100,000 on restoring the house - referred to as "Millard Towers II" - quickly proved unrealistic and they ended up with a bill for £250,000.

Ms Millard, 37, started dabbling in the property market in 2000 after she decided that simply living in one house with a mortgage was "boring". At first the dream went to plan with property prices soaring and a booming buy-to-let market. She started a column in a Sunday newspaper chronicling her experiences as a landlady.

However, in 2003 Ms Millard quit her high-profile job at the BBC after new rules were introduced clamping down on earnings outside the Corporation.

In her latest article she told how the property dream has turned into a nightmare.

Spiralling debt has forced the couple to put the family Skoda on the market and the mortgage on the French flat is "permanently in arrears".

Ms Millard admits she finds it hard to cut down on spending and "can't live" without "a decent haircut", designer clothes, Stila make-up and the New Yorker magazine. She also told how after a period of abstinence, she went on a shopping trip for children's clothes before heading to the West End for a show and an expensive meal.

Financial experts said the family's problems were an extreme version of a dilemma facing thousands of professional couples.

Professor Cary Cooper, head of organisational psychology at Lancaster University said: "These people may be earning quite a lot of money but they are very time-poor and just can't manage their financial affairs. They just think they can take care of everything with plastic.

"They are often not buying unnecessary luxuries but spending on very necessary things... They just don't have time to shop around and get good deals."