Never seen it before but I’ve been drawn in…from what I can tell, they’ve started with a stinking huge pile of money and buried it in renovating the castle and grounds.
I suspect Channel 4 are paying a decent amount for filming and helping make it happen, but they seem to be working on loads of stuff and lots seem to be progressing quickly.
How long are things taking to be done as TV can shorten timescales with clever editing.
I had deliberately avoided this as I reckoned it would be boring but I seem to be totally drawn into it.
They don’t appear to be working in anything but the renovations…so how do they pay the bills, pay the constant renovations and everything else?

so how do they pay the bills,

if you’re making TV you pay for lots of things- location fees being one of them, and you pay your presenters (there’s two of them and they both conveniently live in the location

and believe it or not Channel 4 doesn’t ‘make’ any tv shows – they pay independent production companies to make them. So… if you own the production company that’s not a bad thing either. Maybe call your company ‘Chateau TV’, get all the repeat fees, syndication, and get a few spin off series out of the fornat, and sell the fornat to other territories too. Kerrching!

so how do they pay the bills,

The weddings they host are £POA. I take this to mean a number I can’t comprehend, despite a vivid imagination.

A friend of mine provided the band at their first hosted wedding. It was quite good money.
As for the rest of it – they own the production company so…

£75 to do Dick’s garden (but you do get lunch)

https://thechateau.tv//events-at-the-chateau

The business model is books, merchandise, foreign TV sales, events, speaking engagement and endorsements in that order.

Ok, so sounds like a total gravy train so money not actually an issue…cheers.

I imagine Dick gets a modest pension as a former army officer to keep them in cheese and wine if it all went tits up. (Spoiler alert, it didn’t).

He’s been involved in TV production a number of years now, as mentioned it’s their company. Supposedly the venue charge is around £30k on average, they’ll do ok.

read somewhere Dick was worth a few £million so I doubt they are struggling

They must be doing something right, £350 a night to stop in a glorified tent and it’s sold out. And that’s with just one pokey photo on the really rather crap website to sell it to you. My years as a public servant are clearly wasted, I could have retired years ago if I’d have known.

They’re a great pair to watch, they do beautiful things in beautiful surroundings.
Fair play to them for making it happen 😊👍

It would be interesting to know whether they had a large number of tradesmen/women doing a lot of the renovation work as the programme just shows the two of them. It seems implausible to me that they have done it all themselves whilst also writing books, organising weddings, other media work and raising a family.

I’ve only seen a few but I’m sure they had others involved too.

Philby +1

We’ve discussed that. I think there’s a quiet team of folk in the background – maybe PA, gardener, builder as well as event staff and event planners.

If you were to do this independently, unless you had serious money to start off with for the renovations, it just wouldn’t work financially. That’s why so many of the chateaus are relatively cheap, they are too expensive to turn around without a huge capital outlay in the first place.

Besides the tv business, the wedding business, the improvised hotel stuff, they appear to do a bit of a pyramid scheme in repeating the process of moving to France, buying a big old house for very little and renting rooms to people from London who are interested in moving to France, buying a big old house for very little and renting rooms to people from London who are interested in moving to France, buying a big old house for very little and renting rooms to people from London who are interested in moving to France, buying a big old house for very little and renting rooms to people from London…

France is the new Devon.

The first few series were ok, when they were doing the restoration, but now it just seems like a 60 minute advert. But good luck to them.

Totally agree with that @richmars.

As for the coin…..he obviously came from a reasonable amount, then earned more from TV. She was on Dragons Den and had a patisserie business in London somewhere…..so they hardly had a ’20k budget’or whatever they harped on about in the first series.

As for the wedding costs, we actually got in touch (my girlfriend fiancé is a mega fan of the show) and the 30k mentioned above would be bottom end of their price range…but compared to anything similar in the UK it seemed like a fairly competitive price*.

*Competitive is obviously very subjective. Over budget for us, but I’m partly in industry (wedding band) and my partner is a wedding planner. 30k is about the average UK spend I think? We both certainly spend a lot of time working at weddings that will be spending well over 30k, and not at venues that have the fairly unique selling points that the Chateau does!

Glad they made a really good go of it. I remember Dick from Scrapyard Challenge (is that title right?) and he always came across as a genuine guy who really knew his stuff and was very hard working. He is very inventive and was IIRC into generating power from alternative sources.
Sounds like his hard work, inventiveness, skills and business acumen have made them successful and I wish them well with it.

BTW you have to remember the budget for making any sort of TV show is pretty large in comparison to what most people spend on their house or car or whatever.
A friend of mine was on George Clarke’s amazing spaces – he had a Citroen HY van he used for his Crepe making business (was successful too, he was French so he knew his stuff!) and was only one of the features in one episode alongside 2 other projects. They followed his build but he ran out of money before he needed to do the respray at the end and the TV company just paid for it (couple of thousand quid minimum?) so they could film it finished or they would have not been able to finish it and film the result. Seems like it was fairly standard thing to do to get the program made rather than waste stuff they had already filmed or have to find something else to fill the slot in the program. I’m sure it happens in many of these programs.

My wife worked in print media (homes and interiors), things are very rarely as they are presented.

Isn’t this Dick’s second family?

I seem to remember him doing a show years ago with his previous missus and their (then) teenage kids, where he moved to lot of them to an old farm and made them build stuff and muck out pigs…

If you can get C4 and aspirational types to foot the bill why wouldn’t you buy a chateau?

Glad they made a really good go of it. I remember Dick from Scrapyard Challenge (is that title right?)

Châtheap challenge.

from what I can tell, they’ve started with a stinking huge pile of money

Errr no. They bought the chateau and grounds for something like £230K all in. I do believe they’ve put the graft in themselves and made a really good go of it as a business. Was never bought as a family hone. Was always going to have to be a business that had to pay. They’ve been very entrepreneurial with it. You can. Ow buy Angels designs on stuff too.

Dick a has done a few series before. He appeared on scrap heap challenge but did something where he renovated an old mill and made a show about it so he has form on these renovation gigs. It’s been a really good show I think… the series that covered the renovation on the chateau itself at least. Now they’re milking it with the spin off DIY thing, but hey, they’ve created something so good on them.

So what if it’s a pricy place to stay. They’re targeting the well healed…. The only business model that could work due to limited rooms, small number of months they can attract guests, they need to make large margins to fund the renovations (still not complete), expand the business further and earn a bit of coin for themselves.

One of the most impressive things is Dick is such an accomplished chef. All self taught too.

They bought in at the right time. The french don’t get the renovation obsession of the bruts and don’t see the oitential in a n old pile of bricks. Mate of mine has done very well for himself buying knackered barns off french farmers for a pittance as they don’t see any value in them so happy to sell them to a crazy brut, then they renovate them to high end holiday homes for rich brits. Dock and angel seem to have caught this in picking up their place so cheap. Think the french are catching on though and prices for old run down chateaus are exploding

They seem to be fairly astute celebrity/entrepreneurs.

From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_the_Chateau

Background and production
Dick Strawbridge invited Channel 4 to join them documenting their journey in searching for a house. The couple had already spent four years searching for a home to bring up their two young children, Arthur and Dorothy. In contrast to many other home shows, the television coverage was never planned, but Channel 4 paid to document the journey which lifted some of the weight that such a large task would cost. This was in the form of the presenter’s fee, in addition to the exposure from the show’s advertising, which has allowed the business to uphold its popularity as a wedding and events venue.[10]

The appeal of the show may be due to the affordability on face value and lack of demand for such French properties, which attracts many English house buyers. That was the same story with Dick and Angel, since when they first started house hunting in France, they were looking at more modest properties such as small farmhouses, until they realised that at such low prices, they could buy a castle.[11] For £280,000, they purchased a chateau that lists forty-five rooms, a walled garden and surrounded by a moat on a twelve-acre property, ten times larger than the average British house. However, the show makes viewers aware of the large restoration and running costs of such projects, which can become costly for people trying to make a business out of these castles.[3]

Isn’t this Dick’s second family?

Yes, his son from his first family sometimes comes to the chateau to help out.

I can’t believe a deal to film a documentary (and I’m using that word loosely) had not been struck before they bought the house.
He’s a TV person, I know a few people in the media and what you see is not what happens in real life, the magic of TV!

The business model is books, merchandise, foreign TV sales, events, speaking engagement and endorsements in that order.

Agreed, but now that they’ve got lots of followers I’ve heard that the family are all going to go on an incredibly successful chateau “food ‘n fitness” plan that they then sell for millions of bucks around the world!! (Only kidding, I can’t see Dick on a diet somehow).

Dicks cooking series on the yacht with his son got me through some very dark times a few years ago so all power to him
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hungry_Sailors

There was some stuff in the papers a few months back about it not quite being the idyllic picture they present though:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bullying-led-to-escape-from-the-chateau-dt7b59k9k

I can’t believe a deal to film a documentary (and I’m using that word loosely) had not been struck before they bought the house.

From the Wikipedia page above:

Dick Strawbridge invited Channel 4 to join them documenting their journey in searching for a house. The couple had already spent four years searching for a home to bring up their two young children

They bought in at the right time. The french don’t get the renovation obsession of the bruts and don’t see the oitential in a n old pile of bricks. Mate of mine has done very well for himself buying knackered barns off french farmers for a pittance as they don’t see any value in them so happy to sell them to a crazy brut, then they renovate them to high end holiday homes for rich brits. Dock and angel seem to have caught this in picking up their place so cheap. Think the french are catching on though and prices for old run down chateaus are exploding

this . very much this.

My folks made the move over a few years ago. full DIY refurb and have been open for business for quite a while and continuing to exceed expectations year on year.

they got about 8 times the house they had in the uk for 1/3rd of the money. It had been on the market for YEARS – French just not interested in the work required.

had their first UK guests last week(driving to Spain)- mostly its Dutch/French and Spanish they get- in that order.

Getting a lot of repeats staying for long weekends/weeks after using it overnight passing through en route.

Mainly as the alternative local accommodation is dire but there are attractions to the area – hence why they set up there after experiencing the local accommodation while holidaying with an eye to setting up somewhere.

Local Mayor apprehensive at first but has fair warmed up now they see the benefits.

My French colleague’s father bought a dilapidated chateau and spent much of her upbringing and longer renovating it. A lifetime passion. Sadly he died just before finishing it. But it’s not true to say that the French don’t care. Some do.

I watched a few episodes of the renovation and it looked very contrived but some nice ideas (ground heat pump, for example). Of course there is an army of tradesman, but it is the entertainment business. It’s not fly on the wall hard journalism.

I like him, and enjoyed it, although I’ve gone off it more recently. He’s quite an entertaining character – if he uses that to make money then fair play to him.

I haven’t any of the more recent DIY spin off, where it was about other people, though I’m not sure why. Has anybody watched it and is it any good?

Also the Brits may be obsessed with renovation but every time I look at the inside of a French house I marvel at the tastelessness of their interior decor 😂

The alternative way to fund a project like this is to work in the City, lose an eye watering amount of money for your clients and company, then get paid a more modest but still eye watering sum by that company to go a long way away, not talk about it, and never come back (8 or 9 zeros in the loss and a public school accent seems to make the difference between criminal irresponsibility and a very long comfortable retirement).

Sadly this is not a fantasy someone in our area is understood to have come by their money in this way (There has been pretty reliable collaboration to the story)

I know his brother. He’s Bursar at my partners lads’ school http://www.austinfriars.cumbria.sch.uk/w/page/directory

I know his brother.

Small world, I think I knew him as well. Vaguely recall teaching him as an undergraduate at RMCS in the late 80’s and then when he came back later to do his MSc (Weapons Effects on Structures – I think)………….

Glad they’ve done away with ‘got no budget’ nonsense.

Oh we need a machine for this job but we’ve got no budget, oh look a new digger on the driveway.

Oh would be great to have a glass elevator but we’ve got no budget etc.

Sure they were trying to suggest at the start that the sale of the UK flat paid for the purchase and the change was the refurb budget, must have realised everyone actually knows TV is paying for it.

Other thing they need to be less coy about are the kids. Must have shipped the inlaws in to look after the kids full time. I’m trying to do up my house with two young kids and it aint happening – mine is no Chateau either!

I don’t mind it, watched the first couple of seasons till it went to that helping other Brits who actually have no budget rubbish.