Interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has lifted the lid on life beside the Beckhams and other A-listers in the Cotswolds, a British countryside enclave that echoes the celebrity magnetism of Muskoka or the Hamptons. Canadian followers of British pop culture track the area through social media and streaming shows much the way they watch cottage-country hotspots at home.
The Beckham neighbourhood
The interiors expert moved to the country enclave 19 years ago with his wife Jackie and their two children, years before it became the hottest location for celebrity homes in the UK.
Former Spice Girl Victoria, 52, and football legend David Beckham, 51, own a £12 million farmhouse in the affluent spot, jostling alongside stars like Simon Cowell and Jeremy Clarkson.
And Llewelyn-Bowen, who is currently on his art tour Drawn To Adorn Finnisage, has now opened up to The Standard about the "very shiny" famous people he calls his neighbours.
"[The Cotswolds] is definitely feeling like a much more sophisticated, much more elegant, slightly fancier place than it used to. We live just outside Cirencester, which is the South Cotswolds. The Beckhams and the Cowells and Ellen DeGeneres and all of those very shiny people live at the kind of the Oxfordshire-end," the TV presenter, 61, explained.
"They're sort of huddled around Jeremy Clarkson like moths around the fame. I've always said that actually our end is much less celebby. In fact, I would go as far as to say that our little part of the Cotswolds is in fact the 'slummy' end, which we share with the King and the late Jilly Cooper."
Former Changing Rooms star Llewelyn-Bowen lives in a six-bedroom manor house with wife Jackie, their two daughters and their grandchildren.
He explained that their neighbourhood in Cirencester attracts more "discreet" famous faces.
Discreet famous faces
"I mean one of one of the most discreet celebrities you'll ever meet around is Sade, who you know, it's phenomenally iconic. But you really literally wouldn't recognise her if you jumped into her at the paté counter of Waitrose," he quipped.
"And we tend to attract people like... we've got Noel Gallagher, we've got Harry Styles popping up apparently quite soon.
"One of the great sadnesses is that Rick Astley was here for a couple of years, but he just didn't like it, which was a real shame."
The interior designer then recalled an "embarrassing" moment when he ran into actor Jamie Dornan, who played the psychotic murderer Paul Spector in acclaimed BBC crime drama The Fall.
"We had a funny moment the other day, Jackie and I were in the middle of Thyristor. And she suddenly grabbed me by the hand and said, 'There's a serial killer over there... What should we do? What should we do? Should we talk to someone?'" he recounted.
"And I looked across, I said, 'No, darling, that is Jamie Dornan, who you're very used to seeing playing a serial killer. I'm sure most of the women in the queue recognised him from Fifty Shades of Grey, which is why they'd gone Fifty Shades of Pink Embarrassed."
Llewelyn-Bowen also reflected on the difference between London and the Cotswolds.
"We lived in Greenwich, which is a very, very particular kind of flavour of London living. It always had that slight kind of country edge to it and obviously, you know, surrounded by all of the ancient history," he said.
"But definitely the Cotswolds itself has really changed in the last 20 years. Dare I say it, I think it's sort of it's almost as if we've rubbed off on the Cotswolds a little bit. Everything's got a little bit less kind of mud coloured and a little bit less kind of agricultural."