'We're not just foul-mouthed buffoons'

After a tortuous four-hour rail journey, I get a taxi to Great Fulford. Since it was repainted, the house stands out like a brilliant white mirage among the trees and fields that surround it as far as the eye can see. It is only as you approach it from the meandering driveway that you notice the disrepair, with the leaded window panes falling out of their frames.

Every arrival is met with a chorus of barking labradors and the sound of Francis telling them to shut up. I am immediately taken on a grand tour. We wander into a bedroom where we find a newspaper lying on the rotting floorboards - it is dated 1968.

Apart from the occasional au pair, Kishanda has no domestic help, so it is perhaps no surprise that the last time this room saw Mr Sheen was when the Beatles were still together.

But, despite the decay, the house is full of life. There is an air of upperclass country "stuff and nonsense" about the place, especially in the kitchen, with its 1970s kitchen units, and the incongruous sight of a carton of full-cream milk (none of that semi-skimmed nonsense here, you understand) sitting next to an antique silver teapot on the table.

The four black labradors are the real stars of the show. They regularly sit at the kitchen table, hoping to steal food off plates. Failing that, they'll happily lick the dirty plates in the dishwasher and Francis, to whom they are clearly devoted, sings to them regularly. When Kishanda goes up to London, Francis waves their paws at her morosely.

"I'd be so bored in a small house," protests Kishanda cheerfully. "There is always something to do. I've just had my first plastering lesson and I love it. I'm planning to do the whole house."

Tall, slim and casually elegant despite the mess, Kishanda, 39, was born in Tanzania, where her father was in the colonial service. She grew up in Somerset where she attended "a lot of schools". Presumably because of her father's work? There is a pause. "No, I was just naughty." After leaving school, she worked in London as a tour guide, freelance interior-design journalist and auction house receptionist - all ideal training for her current job.

SHE met Francis at a party in London in 1992. Her first impression was that "he had huge appeal. He had these brilliant blue eyes and whiskery eyebrows - he was frightfully good looking."

She is furious about his portrayal in the programme as an upper-class buffoon. "He is very clever, he always has something interesting to say - can you imagine anything more boring than being married to somebody thick? I knew very quickly that I wanted to be married to him. We got engaged in six weeks and married within three months," she says.

Romance and excitement rather than horror was her first reaction upon seeing the house when Francis first brought her down to Devon to meet his mother, who had, incidentally, predicted that he'd never find a woman who would want to live there.

Francis had inherited the 800-yearold pile aged 17 when his father died, and says the rot started in the 17th century during the English Civil War, when the house was fired upon and looted.

The house had no electricity until 1948 and mains water was only installed in the 1960s, after health and safety officials discovered the existing-supply was being filtered through a long-deceased rabbit.

The current estimated cost of repairs is over £1 million - the Fulfords' income from their tenant farmers and the occasional visit from American tourists at £100 a go only just keeps their heads above water.

"My biggest excitement this week is not that stupid programme," says Kishanda, "but my publishing contract coming through." She is in the process of writing a biography of one of her husband's forebears based on diaries she dug up in the library. Louisa Carolina Collerton once owned the Bahamas, but lost them due to "forgery and skullduggery".

The couple have four children: Arthur, 11, who will inherit the estate, his twin sister, Matilda, plus Humphrey, 10, and Edmund, eight. Having all attended the local village school, the oldest two are off to board - if their parents can stump up the fees.

At home they swear fluently and hang out of the roof of their father's Land Rover as he careers along the estate's many country lanes.

The children seem to come straight from the pages of a Nancy Mitford novel as they chase through corridors, fight in the grounds and bathe in mud in a creek on the estate. A vigorous game of cricket in the great hall under portraits of the various Fulford ancestors results in a piece getting knocked off the elaborate carved ornamentation.

With admirable ingenuity, Kishanda merely Sellotapes the piece back in place. "There, that should hold it for another 100 years," she says cheerfully.

The F***ing Fulfords is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.