Ann Maurice
House Doctor, Uncovered
UKTV Style's House Doctor is the domestic interiors equivalent of Anne Robinson. She's quick-witted, quick-tongued and quick-fire with her prognosis. If she isn't lightening it, stripping it or painting it white, she's ruthlessly depersonalising it - wrapping it all up in a big black bin bag and dispatching it with a crisp "goodbye".
Happily, the real-life Ann Maurice is far less intimidating than the House Doctor character she plays in the series. She's charming and gracious, bristling with the tact and diplomacy she relies so much upon when shooting the show: "In real life, there's a lot more tact involved than you see on the screen," she says, "I don't think that I could walk into someone's house and immediately start criticising everything they've done and survive in business very long."
And survive she has. The series, and indeed Ann herself, now have a cult following in the UK as well as an adoring legion of gay admirers. "They love the dominatrix in me" she says, "It's my tough image - bend over, I'll spank you if you're not good - that kind of thing."
But Ann graciously refuses to accept any credit for the show's success, saying instead that it's our obsession with DIY and the nature of the show itself that make it so popular. "The British people are very polite", she says. "They absolutely love the segment when the viewers walk through the house and say exactly what they think when nobody's listening. They love that voyeuristic quality that the House Doctor has. It's a kind of combination between a makeover show and a reality TV show!"
Grim reality
It's the reality that everybody really wants to know about: what does Ann honestly think of the houses she doses with the House Doctor's magic medicine? "Sometimes I just wish you could actually see how dirty some of the houses really are. I wish you could smell them. On television, the houses never look as bad as they actually are and you can't smell them - you miss the fine points really." Well put. That old tact and diplomacy again.
The UK has provided Ann with a wealth of design no-no's to work with, including her pet hates - net curtains and wallpaper borders - though she's a lot more forgiving of British interiors than she used to be. "The homes here are much older than they are in the United States. Indoor plumbing and central heating for example were not around when some of them were built - these things are all added on afterwards and that makes for all kinds of design faux-pas!" But she admits that people's tastes are changing. "There has been a revolution in terms of taste. The old look is turning over. Though some of these garish colours that people have learned from the TV programmes and executed pretty poorly are a nightmare!"
So, if she had to have a TV interior designer give her own home a makeover, who would she choose? "That's dangerous isn't it? Actually, I think that Graham Wynne has very nice taste. I think if any of them had to come over, I would invite Graham. I wouldn't have Linda Barker. Even though I like her work she definitely has a different taste to me and I certainly wouldn't have Lawrence come over, but that's for a different reason...".
There's that House Doctor coming out again. Or is it Ann Maurice? Whoever it is, she's speaking her mind and as a rule, always does. "I have to say that being an American I am slightly more forthright and outspoken than the British public. So in comparison, I maybe sound a little more extreme".
Satisfied customers
Extreme or not, with so many sold houses to her credit, she's doing something right and has many satisfied patients to prove it. "It's great knowing you've changed somebody's life in a good way. Everybody who is moving is stuck in their lives if their house isn't selling, so if you're somehow part of the combination that makes that person become unstuck and enable them to move on, to take that next step in their lives, then I think you've done something really great".
And there's plenty more of Ann's special House Doctor medicine to go round. She is soon to host several more of her popular Home Staging seminars, in which she teaches the basics of preparing a house for sale; and has a brand new series airing this spring. So what's next? The Weakest Link? Anne Robinson's probably already collecting her P45. Goodbye...
And survive she has. The series, and indeed Ann herself, now have a cult following in the UK as well as an adoring legion of gay admirers. "They love the dominatrix in me" she says, "It's my tough image - bend over, I'll spank you if you're not good - that kind of thing."
But Ann graciously refuses to accept any credit for the show's success, saying instead that it's our obsession with DIY and the nature of the show itself that make it so popular. "The British people are very polite", she says. "They absolutely love the segment when the viewers walk through the house and say exactly what they think when nobody's listening. They love that voyeuristic quality that the House Doctor has. It's a kind of combination between a makeover show and a reality TV show!"
Grim reality
It's the reality that everybody really wants to know about: what does Ann honestly think of the houses she doses with the House Doctor's magic medicine? "Sometimes I just wish you could actually see how dirty some of the houses really are. I wish you could smell them. On television, the houses never look as bad as they actually are and you can't smell them - you miss the fine points really." Well put. That old tact and diplomacy again.
The UK has provided Ann with a wealth of design no-no's to work with, including her pet hates - net curtains and wallpaper borders - though she's a lot more forgiving of British interiors than she used to be. "The homes here are much older than they are in the United States. Indoor plumbing and central heating for example were not around when some of them were built - these things are all added on afterwards and that makes for all kinds of design faux-pas!" But she admits that people's tastes are changing. "There has been a revolution in terms of taste. The old look is turning over. Though some of these garish colours that people have learned from the TV programmes and executed pretty poorly are a nightmare!"
So, if she had to have a TV interior designer give her own home a makeover, who would she choose? "That's dangerous isn't it? Actually, I think that Graham Wynne has very nice taste. I think if any of them had to come over, I would invite Graham. I wouldn't have Linda Barker. Even though I like her work she definitely has a different taste to me and I certainly wouldn't have Lawrence come over, but that's for a different reason...".
There's that House Doctor coming out again. Or is it Ann Maurice? Whoever it is, she's speaking her mind and as a rule, always does. "I have to say that being an American I am slightly more forthright and outspoken than the British public. So in comparison, I maybe sound a little more extreme".
Satisfied customers
Extreme or not, with so many sold houses to her credit, she's doing something right and has many satisfied patients to prove it. "It's great knowing you've changed somebody's life in a good way. Everybody who is moving is stuck in their lives if their house isn't selling, so if you're somehow part of the combination that makes that person become unstuck and enable them to move on, to take that next step in their lives, then I think you've done something really great".
And there's plenty more of Ann's special House Doctor medicine to go round. She is soon to host several more of her popular Home Staging seminars, in which she teaches the basics of preparing a house for sale; and has a brand new series airing this spring. So what's next? The Weakest Link? Anne Robinson's probably already collecting her P45. Goodbye...
