Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has lifted the lid on life alongside the Beckhams and other A-listers in the Cotswolds, where he has lived for 19 years with his wife Jackie and their two children.
The interiors expert, now 61, moved to the rural enclave long before it became a hotspot for celebrity homes. Victoria Beckham, 52, and David Beckham, 51, own a £12 million farmhouse there, rubbing shoulders with stars like Simon Cowell and Jeremy Clarkson.
Celebrity neighbours and the 'slummy' end
Speaking to The Standard during his art tour Drawn To Adorn Finnisage, Llewelyn-Bowen described the famous faces in the area as “very shiny”. He explained: “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 Cowell's and Ellen DeGeneres and all of those very shiny people live at the kind of the Oxfordshire-end.”
He added: “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.”
Discreet famous faces and a Jamie Dornan encounter
The former Changing Rooms star, who lives in a six-bedroom manor house with his family, noted that his neighbourhood attracts more “discreet” celebrities. He quipped about Sade: “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 also mentioned other local stars: “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.”
Recalling an “embarrassing” moment with actor Jamie Dornan, he said: “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?’ 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.”
Cotswolds transformation
Reflecting on the area's evolution, Llewelyn-Bowen compared it to his previous home in Greenwich, which had a “country edge”. 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.”
His art tour Drawn to Adorn Finissage with Buckingham Fine Art returns to Cotswold Contemporary Cirencester in October 2026.
