Hackney is now reality for Mel

Former Big Brother inmate Melanie Hill has bought her first flat. She has moved to Hackney, having previously shared a home with her mother, a local midwife, in Muswell Hill. A similar two-bedroom flat near Victoria Park would cost between £250,000 and £350,000. Hill's showbiz career took off in 2000, after she was filmed snogging fellow inmates on Big Brother. She now presents the reality game show Chained on Channel 4's digital entertainment channel, E4.

BBC TV drama chief Alan Yentob is looking for a second home in Notting Hill. He has twice viewed a four-bedroom Victorian house there belonging to artist Celia Lyttleton. The £1.1 million property is only a short stroll from the palatial house that he shares with his long-standing partner, TV producer Philippa Walker, and their two children. "Celia's house has a quirky, Sixties feel about it," say agents Garden Square Properties. "Unfortunately, Admiral Nelson's four-poster bed in the drawing room is not included in the price."

Royal author Lady Georgie Campbell is to sell her Gloucestershire home for £250,000 through the Cotswolds Residential Agency because she plans to move to France. The four-bedroom, two-bathroom property is on the ground floor of Haresfield Court, a converted Jacobean manor house set in seven acres. "It has the most beautiful panelled drawing room," says Lady Campbell, who also rents a two-bedroom house in Belgravia. "I plan to leave England and settle near Toulouse with my family."

The elegant interior of a five storey Chelsea mansion will be revealed next month in BBC2's forthcoming film The Gathering Storm, about Sir Winston Churchill and starring Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave. The Grade II listed eight-bedroom property on Cheyne Walk is for sale for £5 million through Friend and Falke. It was used as the location for the London town house of Churchill's confidante Desmond Morton, played by Oscar winner Jim Broadbent.