My parents had a newsagent’s and were up really early every day working to provide a comfortable home environment for my brother and me. I worked as early as I could as it was instilled in us how important it was to earn your own wage as soon as you could, so I did a paper round for my dad and a milk round, too, for some pocket money.
We didn’t really have much money and took British holidays to Butlins, but we never lacked for anything. We went to a good school and money just wasn’t really an issue in the house.
And even today money isn’t an important factor in my life. The only time money has had an impact on my life was when I didn’t have any when I lost it all. Then I realised how important money was just to survive and to do basic things that you usually took for granted.
Are you a spender or a saver?
A spender. If I’ve got it, I’ll spend it. I’ve never had a business brain when it comes to money. I’ve learnt so much in the past 10 years after what’s happened. Now I can see how money can make money and how people are driven to make more money.
How much did you get paid for your first regular work?
While I was still at school I took a part-time evening job selling programmes at Edinburgh’s Playhouse Theatre for acts like Bruce Springsteen, Shirley Bassey and the Jam, and on a good night I’d make £40, which felt like a fortune.
During the summer holidays when I was about 16 or 17 I used to DJ at the local roller disco, which became a nightclub at night. With the money I made from those gigs I bought enough records to start DJing at weddings and 18th birthdays.
I was making about £100 a week, then I entered a national DJing competition, where I was spotted by a company that employed DJs in foreign hotels. I was actually training to be a piano technician at the time and still living at home, but I gave that up when I was offered £1,000 a month plus free accommodation and food and drink to DJ in a five-star hotel in Denmark.
That was a game changer for me. I then started DJing for bigger and bigger clubs back in Britain and was earning about £1,000 a week for Mecca Leisure, DJing at their clubs.
My television break came when I warmed up the audience for a Tyne Tees television pop show and was asked to make a “showreel”, which I sent to ITV, the BBC and satellite channel Music Box, and moved down to London to present an Eighties music magazine show called Formula One for them.
Then about a year later, in 1989, out of the blue the BBC called me in for an audition, which ended up in me getting the job on Blue Peter. Salary‑wise I earned £16,800, so I actually took a £10,000 pay cut, but I knew it was a good opportunity.
Were your later presenting jobs with commercial channels more lucrative?
I did a bizarre but short-lived big-budget Gladiators-style show called Scavengers in 1994 and earned £15,000 an episode. That was when I realised I was earning decent money.
In 1998 I started presenting Wheel of Fortune, where I was originally filming three shows a week for £2,000 a show, but when Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? arrived the format changed and I was filming five shows a day for £2,000 in total just to keep the show alive.
But I did end up doing 735 episodes over three years, so at that point I was earning about £200,000 a year, which went up even more when I started presenting This Morning in 2001 with Fern Britton. At the peak I was earning about £350,000 a year.
Did you spend wildly at this point or invest sensibly?
I bought a lovely house in Barnes, south-west London, which I’d originally planned to move into a year before with Catherine Zeta-Jones when we were together.
It was an old, detached Gothic coach house built in 1752 but it was a wreck, so I probably spent about £400,000 doing it up, then sold it for £1m. I then used everything I had to buy a plot of land overlooking Richmond Park. I put everything into building the house and enjoyed it for about a year. Before the market crashed its value peaked at £4m.
The plan was that the house would be my pension but obviously that wasn’t to be.
And then in December 2002, several weeks after Matthew Wright accidentally identified you on Channel 5 as the unnamed ‘acquaintance’ who Ulrika Jonsson claimed had raped her in her autobiography, you were arrested on several sexual charges and everything changed.
I lost everything overnight. ITV said I’d forfeited the right to have my contract paid up and the whole thing was a mess. Everything around me was on fire and it was a hell of a place to be, and money just wasn’t at the top of my list of considerations.
It was about maintaining my innocence [the charges were dropped in July 2003]. I’d gone from earning over £300,000 to not a single penny coming in. And I also started having to pay for lawyers and PR agencies, so any savings I had disappeared. I spend about £500,000 on legal costs but at least I wasn’t in jail.
Lord McAlpine was awarded £185,000 by the BBC after it made false child abuse allegations against him. Did you not attempt to win compensation when your case was thrown out?
One of my biggest regrets was not suing the newspapers and Channel 5, but I was advised at the time that if I sued the television companies they would never touch me again. I took the advice but the phone never rang. But I just about survived and at least I had a life to rebuild.
How did you survive financially after your career collapsed so suddenly?
I had to sell absolutely everything to avoid bankruptcy and to avoid going on reality television shows, which I didn’t want to do.
I pleaded with the bank to let me keep the Richmond house but was forced to sell it for £3.5m when the crash hit and the bank wanted its money back.
I paid them back every penny but there was nothing left. I thought I was going to get out with some money but I sold at the worst time.
I managed to get a mortgage by hook or by crook to buy a house next door to my mum and dad’s house in Edinburgh for £110,000 and that was my lot.
From then I’ve been rebuilding my life. I couldn’t get a job for four years, then eventually I got a job DJing in a local club for £400 a week, which just kept me afloat.
Then, after doing some community radio work, I started working for Radio Forth and now I’ve got a year’s contract to do the afternoon show from Monday to Friday, so hopefully that’ll be renewed.
Does money make you happy?
Other things are more important to me, like my sanity and surviving and staying healthy and looking after my mum and dad.
What impact has having a daughter had on your financial outlook?
My daughter is nine now, so I’ve bought some shares in Royal Mail, I’ve got a pension and I’m looking at making sure there will be savings for Isabelle, but it’s a slow process. I’m starting from the ground up.
During the good times did you ever overindulge financially?
My only money pit is my Mercedes 1969 280 SL Pagoda, which I bought for about £18,000 20 years ago and have probably spent the same on maintaining it. It’s about the only thing that has survived from those days but I was determined not to sell it.
The parties at my house were ridiculous, too. The bar was always fully stocked and nobody ever paid for anything. I couldn’t put an exact figure on it but I must have spent tens of thousands on providing drinks for people. At the time I just though it was the thing to do.
Do you gamble?
No. I’ve never met a rich gambler.
What do you like least about money?
How it changes people. I’m very much a people person and I see people who are totally driven by money and getting even more money. I don’t think it makes them happier though. Money gives you options but it doesn’t necessarily make you happier.
And if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands it can be quite destructive.
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