couldnt

It started with one house for £12,000

A couple who couldn’t afford to buy a house in the UK bought an entire French hamlet for £26,000.

Yip Ward and Paul Mappley, both 52, were living in a caravan in Tunbridge Wells when their friends offered them a chance to buy the property in Normandy. They went out to visit the home in Normandy and bought it straight away for £12,000 – funded by selling their belongings, including an old tractor of Paul’s.

Since then, the couple have snapped up the adjacent buildings and now own seven cottages, two barns, a workshop, a cider press, two traditional bread ovens and various other outbuildings – all for £14,000. They began restoring the hamlet building by building in 2020 and have now spent around £100,000 so far – completing the original cottage, which is a holiday rental, alongside a horsebox they brought from the UK that is “booked out”.

Restoration work

They have made their dreams a reality through fundraising efforts by their followers on social media and are set to have their second cottage complete by summer 2027. The pair reckon they have saved more than £100,000 doing the bulk of the work themselves with the help of builder friend Ian, 62.

Yip said: “People always say how did you find the village and it’s not that we were looking, it was a chance meeting with a friend who had got a place and was selling it. We definitely see it as the planets aligned.

“We went and sought out a wreck that had been abandoned 30 years ago and pieced it together. We’re really cracking on now.

“We say to ourselves we can’t believe this whole place is ours. Coming from where we come from, I don’t think the gratitude for being here will ever run out. It blows my mind.”

How they got started

The sellers had changed their minds about the property due to the huge amount of restoration work that needed to be done when they offered it to Yip and Paul. With the rules in France meaning they did not need to hand over the entire sum for eight months after purchase, they set to work during Covid, earning money through their jobs as landscape gardeners to seal the deal.

They even documented their restoration journey and appeared on Channel 4’s ‘Help! We Bought A French Village!’. Husband Paul said they were now in “full restoration mode” after working for years to transform their hamlet, called La Buslière.

He said: “I can’t express to you enough that, apart from cottages one and two, the other three cottages were covered, the whole roof in ivy. They were literally being swallowed by nature.

“We’re saving so much money doing it ourselves. We’ve got a friend we met here; he’s been in the trade for 47 years in building restoration and stuff.

“We knew of him and in 2019 he did repairs on cottage one. He did the roof repairs, minor works and then we didn’t see him for four years and he, unbeknownst to us, was watching our YouTube channel.

“We had a massive two-tonne roof thing that needed to come out as it was rotten on one end. We didn’t have anyone, machinery or money and we were sharing on YouTube saying ‘we don’t know what to do’.

“He saw this video and arrived one day and said ‘come on boys let’s get this beam out’. For the first six months he worked for no payment.”

Earning money

The couple are now able to pay Ian £1,000 weekly through the money they earn on YouTube.

Paul said: “We have five people turning up every single day to donate things – they bring bits of furniture or materials for the roof. I can’t tell you what a community we’ve built somehow.

“Every week we’re donated £400 worth of materials for free we can use. All of this saves us so much money.

“For example one side of the roof of cottage three was really bad and we were quoted £13,000 to fix it and we did it for £2,000 because we did it ourselves.

“We saved £11,000 just on one side of a roof. Take that per cottage doing it ourselves, that’s £22,000 per cottage, seven cottages, which is instantly saving us over £100,000.”

The couple plan, once they have all been restored, to try out and live in every single cottage in their hamlet.

Yip said: “People say ‘once all seven cottages are done you’ll rake it in’. That’s what a capitalist would say.

“We don’t want it to be a metropolis. Every single guest who stays here says they can’t believe how quiet it is.

“There is no light pollution, it’s a fantastic place and we don’t want to ruin it with seven cottages populated with people. The other buildings we’ll turn into workshop spaces.

“We’d like to do summer fairs here and markets. Once a month we’d like to do an outdoor cinema and do pizza making – we have two original pizza ovens.

“There won’t be things like TVs in the cottages. There won’t be UPVC windows. It’s an exciting, amazing place and we want to make sure people are transported back.”

You can follow Paul and Yip’s restoration journey on YouTube @helpweboughtafrenchvillage.

Louis Walsh has revealed that before he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, his doctors were unable to identify the disease in his body

Louis Walsh has revealed that doctors initially ‘couldn’t find anything’ before he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. The TV star and music manager was diagnosed with Waldenström macroglobulinemia in 2024.

The former X Factor star. 74, publicly shared his diagnosis during an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, telling Love Island star Ekin-Su and Levi Roots that during lockdown, he was “sick” and nobody knew he had been secretly battling cancer. He later underwent treatment in Dublin.

Waldenström macroglobulinemia is a rare, slow-growing type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that affects white blood cells in the bone marrow and lymphatic tissues. During an appearance on The Big Interview, Louis shared that medics initially couldn’t find the disease in his body.

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“I had a cancer called Waldenström,” he said. Louis went on to add: “And I didn’t know I had it. And at the end of the X Factor series, I was just feeling very weak, and I went to the doctors.

“They couldn’t find anything. And then, one of the doctors called me back, and he said, ‘I think it’s this rare one’ — it would be rare for me — ‘called Waldenström.’ But I’m told, if you’re going to get a cancer, this is the one to get!”

When asked if he underwent any treatment, he disclosed: “I had chemo for a week. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all – but I couldn’t sleep at night time, so the nurses gave me loads of tea. They were so nice, and I was smiling.”

Louis was later asked whether he was in remission and “100 per cent clear of cancer,” to which he responded: “I think so, oh totally, yeah.” Reflecting on his private health battle, he said in the Big Brother house: “I didn’t even know I had it until I went to the hospital. They checked me, and then they found it.”

He said that his diagnosis affected him mentally, saying: “It’s just up here; even when I go past a hospital, I almost get sick. It’s all gone, I’m fine. It was just the shock of being sick, and that word – nobody wants that word.

“I have it blocked out, a reality check. You see so many people sick, and it’s terrible. In my world, it was all about pop music and all that. I didn’t think of anybody getting sick or anything like that. And that was like, wow, reality check – you’re in the real world.”

During his time on the show, Louis was often seen sleeping. A source said at the time: “Louis is in remission currently but you can see how frail he is and that he has lost a lot of weight. It’s also the reason why he’s sleeping so much; it all took a lot out of him.

“The whole experience was the main driver behind signing up for the show. He’d been really ill and just wanted to enjoy life again and thought, ‘What the hell!'”

The Big Interview: Louis Walsh airs Tuesday, October 27, at 9pm on Virgin Media PLAY and Virgin Media One.

A father who shot dead a gunman at his two daughters’ school in the US state of Oregon has described “hearing children pleading for their lives” and his anguish over those he could not save.

Three students and a teacher were killed by a 16-year-old former student at Silver Rail Elementary School earlier this month. The attacker was then killed by parent Kaylub Giamanco.

“I want to apologise for not saving their babies,” Giamanco, who has been hailed as a hero, said of his thoughts for the parents of the children killed in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) that aired on Friday.

“The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”

Giamanco, 36, said he wanted to meet the victims’ families and “cry with them and hold them”.

He credited a teacher who fought the attacker with giving him the chance to intervene without losing his own life.

“I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero,” he said.

The students who were killed were all boys, aged five, eight and 11. They were among six people in total who were shot in a classroom at the school, police said. Alongside the teacher who was also killed, another child and a teacher were wounded.

Giamanco told OPB the day of the attack began with breakfast and packed lunches. He and his wife spent extra time getting their daughters ready because it was school picture day.

The carpenter had taken lunch to work but decided to go home to eat with his wife instead. That decision brought him past the school as the attack began.

He initially wondered whether someone carrying a long gun was playing a prank. Then he saw him fire at a pickup truck and head towards the school.

Giamanco retrieved a handgun from his vehicle and called emergency services.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,'” he told the broadcaster.

He followed the attacker, who shot through the school’s locked glass doors. Hearing children pleading for their lives and more gunfire, Giamanco crawled towards the building.

“I told myself this is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do,” he said.

GARY Barlow was spotted enjoying some down time with a posh lunch, as he relaxed after Take That’s gruelling concerts recently came to an end.

The singer, 55, was seen in deep conversation with a TikTok star, after recently admitting he could “never physically do” his band’s famous Circus tour again.

But yesterday, the Take That legend was spotted making the most of his free time and was seen in deep conversation with social media wine expert, Tom Gilbey, 54.

The pair were spotted having a catch-up over lunch in an up- market restaurant in London’s Notting Hill.

For his afternoon out, Gary kept things casual in a black jumper, tracksuit bottoms and baseball cap.

As the two men settled down for lunch, they were seen chatting happily together.

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The pair had previously starred in one of Tom’s TikTok videos together, as Gary has his own wine label.

Gary is using his downtime to relax, after Take That’s recent tour wrapped in the summer.

The singer and his band mates Mark Owen, 54, and Howard Donald, 58, travelled the UK with their Circus show this year that they first performed to audiences back in 2009.

But when the concerts ended, Gary, who shot to fame when he was just 19, revealed that it was unlikely he would put the famous tour on again, as he opened up on the physical toll.

“Best tour ever – to say that 35 years into our career is saying something #circuslive. And another tour comes to a close,” he said in an emotional statement.

“Somehow, this one feels a little different. With the other tours, it’s always comforting to know there will almost definitely be a next time. But I’m pretty sure this tour won’t return.

“I was 38 when we originally did this show, and I have to say it’s been a whole other challenge doing it as a 55-year-old,

“I just can’t see a way I could physically do this show again.”

Gary ended the statement with: “So, it’s with an extremely heavy heart that I leave The Circus in my past.

“I got to run away with The Circus twice. Now I’m running towards our next exciting, brand new show.”