Entertainment
90s TV star hasn’t aged a day 24 years after BBC’s most iconic disaster-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro
How has it been over two decades already?
The home makeover show Changing Rooms has an enduring legacy (Picture: BBC Picture Archives)
In 2000, the year of the millennium, the BBC aired an episode of a series that went down in TV history as one of the most disastrous DIY moments ever seen on screen.
The catastrophe on the show Changing Rooms involved interior designer Linda Barker, who – along with DIY expert ‘Handy’ Andy Kane – created a hanging shelving unit for a valuable teapot collection.
After placing the teapots on the shelves, along with some books, horror struck when the entire contraption came crashing down.
Now 24 years after that fateful episode aired, Linda, 62, doesn’t look as though she’s aged a day.
The presenter and interior designer first started working on the BBC programme in 1996, eventually leaving after six years.
On her Instagram, Linda regularly shares her interior design ventures with her followers, as well as her TV work and her passion for wild swimming.
Linda first started appearing on the programme in 1996 (Picture: BBC One)
There was so much promise for the hanging teapot shelving unit (Picture: Endemol/BBC Picture Archives)
But then, disaster struck and it ended in tears (Picture: Endemol/BBC Picture Archives)
In June, she revealed that she’d met up with Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud at a plumbing and heating show in Birmingham, hailing the fellow TV star for being ‘good company’.
Expressing how joy over a day of wild swimming in May, Linda wrote on Instagram: ‘The Lake District treated us wild swimmers to some incredible mountain climbing and epic swims.
‘My longest open water swim to date, we calculated 2.4 miles in Bassenthwaite. And our highest tarn swim under the shadow of Scarfell Pike and Great Gables.’
In a previous post shared in January – in presumably very cold temperatures – she said that it’s ‘unlikely that I’ll ever get tired of this cold water swimming lark’.
She’s appeared on TV shows including This Morning and Steph’s Packed Lunch over the years (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock)
Before it was axed by Channel 4, Linda frequently appeared on Steph McGovern’s eponymous TV show Steph’s Packed Lunch, and she often shared posts on social media about her appearances.
In April 2022, she shared a selfie with The Apprentice star Tim Campbell, who’d also been on the programme.
‘My new buddy, thanks for being a great sport Tim on @packedlunchc4,’ she wrote in her caption at the time, to which he responded: ‘The eggs were brilliant as are you! Thanks for the ideas and the warmth with which you shared them with us.’
It looks as though Linda hasn’t aged a day in over two decades (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock)
In an interview, Linda opened up about how she felt regarding her infamous Changing Rooms disaster with ‘Handy’ Andy.
Reflecting on her time on the programme, which was briefly revived by Channel 4 from 2021 to 2022, she said: ‘Probably the worst moment for me, well definitely the worst moment… has to be when I built a floating shelf unit 14 floors up in a flat in Wandsworth.
‘It was to house a very beautiful collection of antique teapots. The idea was this thing just was in the middle of the room. It was going to be absolutely great and it should have looked wonderful of course.
‘But I mean, I’m painting such a great picture because of course the whole thing ended in complete disaster.’
Changing Rooms is available to watch on Channel 4.
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