Alex Jones, one of the favourites to become the new host of Strictly Come Dancing, already has a monumental task on her hands: renovating her country mansion. The One Show host, 49, has been documenting her ambitious plans to overhaul the sprawling £2.8 million property in Ascot, Berkshire, on social media. She purchased the four-bedroom Georgian house in July 2024, even before her husband Charlie Thomson had set foot inside.
So desperate was Alex to secure the deal for the house, whose previous occupants include John Lennon and Ringo Starr, that she wrote a letter to its elderly owner pleading to sell it to her. Speaking to The Times, Alex explained: 'We need to do a lot of work but the bones of the house are lovely. I saw it on my own originally because my husband, Charlie, was in New Zealand. I wrote a letter to Penelope [the owner] and explained why it would be a lovely home for the family. She wrote back and said, "You're exactly the type of person I want to sell this house to." When Charlie got back, I said, "Listen, I've sort of bought a house so we better go and see it." Luckily he loved it immediately. It felt like home when we walked in.'
The house is located in a highly sought-after area where homes in nearby Sunningdale sell for an average of almost £1.3 million. Detached properties sold for an average of £2,449,895, with semi-detached properties fetching £630,571. Alex moved her three children she shares with husband Charlie - Teddy, nine, Kit, six, Annie, four - from their previous home in West London to their new home for a life in the country. She has already noticed the benefits of cleaner air, revealing her kids have stopped coughing. She said: 'For the children, it's been an absolute game-changer. They stopped coughing. I didn't realise it was a thing, but in London, they'd always have this cough and it would linger and that stopped.'
However, Alex's dream home is still far from completion. This is certainly not going to be a straightforward flip. The Welsh TV host claims she and Charlie may take decades to finish transforming the property, which is why a potential bumper pay-cheque from bagging a hosting job on Strictly, following Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman's departure, may come in handy to speed up the process. Alex plans to overhaul the layout of the property so it 'suits her family', which will involve a single-storey extension at the side of the house to create a new supersized kitchen diner that will look out onto the vast gardens. They also want to create four new bedrooms upstairs, while knocking through four 'decent-sized rooms downstairs' - including a study and a dining area - to create a more flowing living space.
The interior also needs a complete overhaul because, as Alex puts it, the style is very 'care home chic', given the property's previous elderly occupants installed hand bars and rails all over the house. The retro look is summed up by Alex's current kitchen, which she jokes is like entering a 'time machine' as it was installed in 1976 - meaning it is older than her - and has been untouched ever since. It features an antique fridge and even a heated cupboard for tea towels. Alex and Charlie also have big plans for the property's outbuilding, which they'll potentially need to live in while the extensive building work to the main house takes place. They want to turn the existing building into a single-storey annexe featuring a studio, gym, bedroom, workshop, and storage space.
The couple plan to take their time renovating the house as they don't envisage giving it another overhaul. Alex told Homebuilding magazine: 'We only want to do it once, and we want to get it right.' She intends to restore many of its original Georgian features, including a fireplace in the playroom that had been hidden for years. 'I love how cosy the space is, but I do think we need to lighten it up a little,' she said. Alex has also created a mood board to guide the interior design. 'I find the process of scrapbooking so handy as a starting point for a new project,' she explained. 'Ahead of our new renovation project I've been looking through my last scrapbook from our old house and it's really lovely to see how many ideas made it into the real things. My absolute favourite thing to do is to browse through interior magazines. My friends and I often share them and I gratefully receive all their old copies so that I can chop them up and use them as inspiration.'
Alex and Charlie lived in West London for over a decade but felt the need to move to the country to offer their children more room to play. Speaking when she moved into her new property, Alex wrote on Instagram: 'It was a big decision to leave West London where we have been very happy for 14 years but we wanted the children to have space to play outside and to grow up in nature. It took nearly four years of searching to find the "one". Somewhere where the children could appreciate nature but yet close enough to London for me to get to work and we have. It feels like she was waiting for us to find her. We feel very lucky.' Alex and Charlie married in 2015 on New Year's Eve. They had their wedding ceremony in Cardiff Castle's stone-vaulted 15th century undercroft, before hosting a reception in the castle's 18th century library and dining room.
In recent years, Charlie - a New Zealand-born insurance broker - has faced significant health challenges, including battling Lyme disease and viral meningitis, and enduring a long recovery. But speaking on sports presenter Gabby Logan's podcast The Mid-Point, Alex says he's over the worst of it. She said: 'He's in a way better place now to where we were a year ago but diet has played a huge part in that. We always eat relatively well but he's quite into nutrition.' Alex added that she is also mindful of her own health: 'I think what drives me is the fact that we have got three young children, and I feel, for them, I need to do the best to preserve myself.' The BBC star is reportedly on a nine-person shortlist of potential hosts to take over the presenting duties on Strictly. The other contenders are Rylan Clark, Emma Willis, Tom Allen, Angela Scanlon, Bradley Walsh, La Voix, Alison Hammond, and Zoe Ball, and bosses are believed to be picking two - or potentially three candidates - to take over from Tess and Claudia for the upcoming series.
