ONE couple ditched pricey holidays to Thailand, Costa Rica and the Maldives for staycations – after renovating a carpenter’s van.
Andy and Claire Stocks, who hail from Barnsley, opted for UK road trips after deciding to buy a run-down van to convert.
Andy and Claire travel all over the UK in their motorhomeCredit: Claire & Andy StocksThey’ve fallen in love with exploring UK destinations – like HartlepoolCredit: Alamy
The couple now go away every week and document their travels on their YouTube Channel – and they’ve just published a book It Started with a Van detailing all of their staycation adventures.
When the pair first ditched far-flung destinations for the UK, it’s safe to say their friends were dubious.
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Andy explained: “People that knew us from before doing this would have never thought we’d be fans of motorhomes.
“We were always going to exotic places rather than staying at campsites.”
But since owning a van, which has since been traded in for a newer motorhome model, the pair have ventured all over the UK.
Claire admitted: “I don’t think we ever appreciated how beautiful the UK is and we go everywhere – one of my favourite places is actually Hartlepool.”
“We went with no real expectations but we saw dolphins in the sea there – it blew our minds.”
Andy added: “We’ve found some great waterfalls in the UK too – which we actually went all the way to Costa Rica to see.
“But actually there are loads in North Yorkshire like Janet’s Foss and Malham Cove.”
Other places they’ve explored are Glastonbury which Andy described as an “amazing spiritual town”.
The pair travelled all the way across to Lake Como in their vanCredit: Claire & Andy StocksIn the UK, the couple discovered the beautiful Janet’s Foss waterfallCredit: Alamy
In the Yorkshire Dales, the couple stopped by The Strid which as Claire explained is one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world.
When it comes to campsites, Claire and Andy like to mix it up from five-star sites to cheaper options with beautiful sea views.
Talking about one of their most memorable stays, Andy said: “There’s a campsite on the Isle of Mull called Fidden Farm.
“You turn up and can park wherever you like, but as it’s coastal, you stay right on the white beach.
“It has the best sunsets that you could possibly wish for and so wild – you get every season within around 15-minutes.”
Fidden Farm on the Isle of Mull is on a white sandy beachCredit: Fidden Farm
Pitches start from £14 per night per adult, and £7 per night for children.
When it came to five-star stays, the couple said the Concierge Camping in Chichester was one of their favourites.
Claire admitted it’s “one of the best campsites I’ve ever been to”,
The campsite even has ‘award-winning washrooms’ which is perfect for those who don’t enjoy the classic camping toilet situation.
It has granite-topped wash areas, complimentary toiletries and lots of the facilities have underfloor heating.
Sun Travel found pitches from £73 per night.
On occasion, Andy and Claire head over to Europe. At one point they explored seven countries including Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, France, Belgium and Italy in two weeks.
And for anyone driving across to France in a motorhome, they suggest you check into an Aire.
Andy called Glastonbury an ‘amazing spiritual town’Credit: Alamy Claire was amazed when she saw dolphins off the coast of HartlepoolCredit: Alamy Stock Photo
‘Aire’ is short for the French term ‘aire de service’ – which essentially is a free or cheap motorhome camping area.
Andy explained: “We used Aires on a trip to Normandy, they’re really basic campsites but they’re about €10 a night so it’s a really cheap way to get around.”
Claire added: “You don’t have to book either, and they’re spotlessly clean and lots of them have beautiful views as well.”
“There’s a lovely one outside of Honfleur,” said Andy. “And from there you can just walk into the town.”
Talking about whether it’s made travelling any cheaper, Andy confessed it hasn’t as he never saw any return on his original van.
But he added: “I don’t talk about money – but it’s all experience. That’s how the book ends, it’s not about money, it’s about your life.”
Islamabad, Pakistan – The scoreline read 4-1 to Norway. Iraq had been heavily beaten in their first World Cup match in 40 years. Manchester City striker Erling Haaland scored twice in his World Cup debut as Norway cruised to victory in Group I.
But for Pakistan, the result barely mattered.
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When Zidane Iqbal crossed the touchline for Iraq at Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, in the 59th minute on Tuesday, history was made. He became the first player of Pakistani heritage to appear in a FIFA World Cup.
Pakistan’s national team has never qualified for the tournament. It sits 198th in FIFA’s rankings. For decades, more than 250 million Pakistanis have watched football’s biggest event from the outside.
That changed, in its own complicated way, through a 23-year-old born in Manchester, England.
Between three nations
Zidane Ammar Iqbal was born on April 27, 2003, to a Pakistani father and an Iraqi mother. His father, Aamar, is from the city of Sahiwal in Punjab while his mother, Ayat, was born in southern Iraq.
Growing up in Manchester, Iqbal was eligible to represent England, Pakistan or Iraq. The decision he eventually made was not a calculated one.
Iraq found him the way many things happen now: through social media.
A large Instagram page tracking Iraqis around the world contacted him to ask whether rumours about his heritage were true.
Word eventually reached the Iraq Football Association, which pursued him through a series of video calls with Iqbal and his parents.
Asked by the sports news outlet The Athletic why he chose Iraq, Iqbal said: “All the love and support from the fans in Iraq and across the world and how hard the FA tried to bring me. When someone shows so much love, it’s only right that you feel it.”
He had never visited Iraq before receiving an under-23 call-up in 2021.
The culture shock, he admitted, was real. But he kept returning. Gradually, a country that had once been only part of his heritage began to feel like home.
The road not taken
Iqbal joined Manchester United’s academy at the age of eight and spent 12 years at the club. In December 2021 at 18, he became the first British South Asian player in nearly two decades to appear for United in the UEFA Champions League.
Iraq’s Zidane Iqbal celebrates scoring in a World Cup qualifying match against Indonesia in October 2025 [File: Reuters]
But regular first-team football never followed. He eventually moved to FC Utrecht in the Dutch Eredivisie for about 1 million euros ($1.1m).
His performances during Iraq’s gruelling 21-match qualification campaign, including a winning goal against Indonesia, kept him central to the team’s plans throughout.
The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) had monitored his progress. But it was never truly a contest.
Ali Ahsan, editor of FootballPakistan.com, said the structural gap between the two football systems was simply too wide.
“We are struggling to attract players from bigger clubs, our ranking, the lack of a professional set-up. The PFF still has no technical director or dedicated national team recruitment staff,” Ahsan told Al Jazeera.
“For Zidane, he picked Iraq to be able to play major tournaments, which he probably wouldn’t have gotten with Pakistan,” Ahsan said.
“Had he chosen Pakistan, he could have had a big impact on raising Pakistani football’s profile internationally. He was still at United at the time. He could have started a serious conversation about how football needs to be improved, inspired kids to take it more seriously. Iraq is already a well-established team with a dedicated history, structure and fanbase.”
For Iqbal, the path led elsewhere. But for Pakistan, the moment still mattered.
“I hope there are children – whether Asian, Arab, whatever you are – who watch that and think they can do it,” Iqbal told The Athletic. “It’s definitely possible. And if I’ve done it, why can’t they?”
Iraq next face France on Monday before taking on Senegal in their final group match on June 26. Few expect them to advance. But few expected them to be there at all.
Against Norway, Iraq lost. For Pakistan, history was made anyway.
More than any other artist in the 20th century, David Hockney defined Los Angeles in the public imagination. When he first arrived in January 1964, age 26, his mental image of the city had been forged not by art but by Hollywood movies, which he had watched as a young boy in Yorkshire, England. In later life, he often recollected the sharp-edged shadows cast by the Californian sunlight in movies such as Laurel and Hardy’s “Big Business.
Before he ever went to L.A., Hockney — who died Thursday at 88 — knew that he would love it. Writing about his first descent into the city, he recalled how “as I flew over San Bernardino and looked down — and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I’ve ever been arriving at any other city, including New York.” By this time, the glamour of Hollywood had been compounded by other influences, including the homoerotic magazines that an American friend had given him at the Royal College of Art in London. Titles such as Physique Pictorial, published in L.A. by the pioneering “beefcake” photographer Bob Mizer, held out a promise of California as a paradise of rippling men and permanent sunshine. A darker, no less thrilling image of the city had arisen from Hockney’s reading of “City of Night,” the 1963 novel by John Rechy that tells the story of a hustler in the gay underworld of downtown L.A.
Los Angeles itself felt young to Hockney. He loved the light, the architecture, the sense of space and the sense of possibility — not least the possibility of greater sexual freedom. West Hollywood boasted a large gay bar, the Red Raven on Melrose Avenue, that was unlike anything he had found in London or New York. There was also the lure of the beach, with its pageant of sculpted physiques. Venice Beach struck him as a more body-beautiful version of London’s Portobello Road.
Before long, his work shifted from generic fantasies of the city (a young man showering in Beverly Hills, for instance) to vivid portrayals of its real-life pools, palm trees, architecture and people. American artists such as Edward Ruscha and Edward Kienholz were producing their own canonical images of L.A. in these years, but for Hockney, there were no artistic precedents — “no ghosts,” as he later put it — to live up to. “People then didn’t even know what it looked like,” he once said. “And when I was there, they were still finishing up some of the big freeways.… I suddenly thought: ‘My God, this place needs its Piranesi, Los Angeles could have a Piranesi, so here I am!’ ”
He was true to his word, even if his luminous, serene images of the city were a far cry from Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s feverish visions of Baroque Rome. “Beverly Hills Housewife” (1966), a portrait of a pink-dressed collector in her modernist home, marked the onset of a realist style that would define Hockney’s work for the next decade. This era gave rise to paintings that became icons of their time and place. Among them were “A Bigger Splash” (1967), which was based on a magazine cover that he came across on a newsstand, and “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy” (1968, sold last year at Christie’s New York for $44.3 million). Inspired by Hans Holbein, this portrait of the English novelist and his artist partner was one of the first celebratory portrayals of a gay couple. Hockney would later recount how Isherwood proclaimed: “Oh David, we’ve so much in common; we love California, we love American boys, and we’re both from the north of England.” Hockney’s beloved American boy at this time was Peter Schlesinger, a young artist he had met while teaching at UCLA in the summer 1966 — and a recurring presence in the early L.A. pictures.
According to Norman Rosenthal, who curated a major survey of Hockney’s art at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris last year: “It is astonishing that a boy from a poor family in Bradford became the person — partly because of his gayness, but also his talent — who defined what everybody now thinks of as California. L.A. had no real image in the world before then, unlike New York.”
Despite his enchantment with Los Angeles, Hockney didn’t settle there until 1978, after a decade of bouncing between America and Europe. In the summer of 1979 he moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills, and soon adorned its pool with swishing strokes of blue paint. In the early 1980s, he converted the paddle tennis court into a studio. The meandering routes and Mediterranean scenery of the Hills were a fresh source of amazement, giving rise to monumental depictions of Mulholland Drive and Nichols Canyon in a newly abstract style.
By this time, the city was deeply familiar — a second home — and he had a close circle of friends around him who included the patron Betty Freeman (subject of “Beverly Hills Housewife”), the designer Gregory Evans, the gallery owner Nicholas Wilder and the film producer Joe Simon. “L.A. had represented a whole new world for him,” says Simon, who remained in regular contact with the artist until his final days. “He just loved the light. He was like a kid in a candy store when he first came. But David was all about the work. Everything came back to that.”
In recent decades, Hockney’s name had become synonymous with the landscapes of his native Yorkshire, which he began painting prolifically in the early 2000s. But Los Angeles never lost its newness and promise. His house in the Hills remained a sanctuary until his final years, when he was too frail to travel. L.A. was where he had come of age, and it remained an indelible part of his life and psyche — not least in terms of its egalitarian spirit and its tendency toward the horizontal. “The great thing about Hockney was that he spoke to everybody,” says Rosenthal. “Few artists of his world and his generation could do that.”
James Cahill, a novelist and an art critic, is the author of, among other books, “David Hockney” and the forthcoming “The Beverly Hills Housewife: Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool.”
CONVICTED murderer Mackenzie Shirilla showed tell-tale signs she was trying to force emotion during her arrest and in her bombshell Netflix interview, a body language expert has claimed.
Shirilla, 21, has been languishing behind bars in Ohio after being found guilty of murdering her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan.
Her case has sent true crime fans into a tailspin after the success of the Netflix documentary, The Crash, in which she broke her silence and maintained her innocence.
Shirilla’s TikToks and Instagram posts have resurfaced, showing her regularly posing in the mirror, showing off designer clothing, and even smoking weed in her car.
Text messages revealed by police showed her toxic relationship with Dominic, her boyfriend of four years, whose family claims had tried more than once to break up with her.
She reportedly threatened to harm him during arguments before purposefully plowing into a brick wall while driving her Toyota Camry on July 31, 2022.
Renowned body language expert Logan Portenier, host and creator of the popular YouTube channel Observe, spent hours breaking down her movements in dozens of social media clips and footage.
Here he gives The U.S. Sun his biggest takeaways from the case.
TikTok star
Shirilla was a social media-obsessed teen before the crash and shared daily posts on TikTok of her and Dom, both at home and out and about, as she was often the center of attention.
Reviewing one clip of them in the car together, Logan said, “He doesn’t seem to be as stoked for this video that she’s filming as she does.
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“It didn’t seem as though they were quite on the same page emotionally.
“She’s doing her different poses and expressions for the sake of the video and for his side of things, he seems much more reserved and subdued.
“Because he’s not performing as much for the camera as she is, we’re seeing a fair bit of synchronization across the upper half of his face and the lower half of his face, which lets us know that anything that we’re kind of seeing on that is probably going to be forced. It’s performative.
“And he does, a little lackluster kind of asymmetrical smile on the bottom half of his face.”
Mackenzie Shirilla pouts in a TikTok video with her boyfriend, Dominic RussoCredit: TikTok/kenzshirillaThe then-teenage Shirilla is seen posing in a mirror as her boyfriend Dominic stands awkwardly in the backgroundCredit: TikTok/kenzshirilla
Uncomfortable posing
In another clip from Shirilla’s TikTok, the couple is at home, and she is trying to get him to pose in a full-length mirror as he is seen hiding behind her.
“Mackenzie is doing a lot of the posing,” Logan said. “She’s hitting her different looks that she wants to do during this.
“In the background, you could see initially Dom’s nonverbal communication.
“He’s doing a self hug. You can see him holding both of his arms there.
“That is misconstrued in a lot of areas as exclusively defensive,” but Logan feels this is more about comfort.
“What I do find more interesting is that he does shift later on to holding both hands in front.
“So both of those clusters there, he has one in front and then he has his hands clasped in front like that. Both of those signal a level of discomfort.”
Logan added, “We’re seeing again this dichotomy between the two of them.
“He’s kind of there and he’s being present, albeit uncomfortable, reserved, and needing to do a little bit of self-soothing to be able to make it through.”
Distracted driving
Shirilla, who made no secret of being image-conscious before her arrest, frequently posed for TikTok videos — even when she should have been concentrating on the road.
In hindsight, clips showing her filming herself while driving are especially unsettling, given that two young men would later lose their lives in a crash while riding in a car with her behind the wheel.
“It’s very focused on the phone and what she appears like on it, hitting her specific facial expressions as well,” Logan said.
Mackenzie Shirilla is seen in shades posing while driving her car in one disturbing clipCredit: TikTok/kenzshirillaMackenzie Shirilla looks distressed as she is cuffed in the back of a police carCredit: Strongsville Police Department
“And on those facial expressions, this helps us understand how she will behave and appear when she’s performing.
“There might be some of that lip pursing that we kind of see in there.
“There are some head tilts in there as well as she’s trying to be perceived in a very specific way, so that performative non-verbal communication comes in handy in future situations, because then you can keep an eye out for some of those patterns that may or may not show up in the future.”
Cuffed and anxious
Shirilla survived the crash and police launched an investigation, as evidence slowly proved it was not an accident and she recovered from multiple surgeries.
Fast-forward to November 2022, and Shirilla’s life blows up in smoke as she’s finally arrested and later charged with murder.
“I don’t know that she’s aware that there’s a camera pointed at her, that she’s going to be perceived in this area, and so what we’re going to be able to see is more of her unfiltered nonverbal communication,” Logan pointed out.
“And with this, she is feeling what would be considered in that vein of the universal emotion of sadness.
“There’s grief, there’s panic, and stress, everything that can go into that.
“What really gives it away is the action in her forehead area.
“What we’re seeing predominantly is unit one activation, which is the middle portion of your eyebrows when they go upward during genuine sadness and grief.
“You can see that happening symmetrically, but if it’s more performed, a lot of people will end up having light asymmetrical activation because it’s not genuine.”
Frozen with fear
In further footage of Shirilla in the back of a police car after her arrest, Logan said she appears frozen with fear despite not shedding a tear as she heads to the station.
“She has fairly relaxed eye positioning in general when she’s not panicked,” he said.
“And so this widening of her eyes, it indicates, genuinely, that she’s feeling anxious. This would be considered fear.”
Logan added that while Shirilla “might not be terrified, it would at least trigger as fear to the anxiety levels” as she rides in the police car.
“So we’re seeing both the combination of the grief across the upper half of her forehead and her eyes are showing the fear as well,” Logan said.
She relaxed before suddenly looking distressed again, but Logan feels it may not have been genuineCredit: Strongsville Police DepartmentMackenzie Shirilla is seen in a mugshot after her arrest in November 2022Credit: ohio.gov
“Then when we get down to the rest of her face, some things that show more physiology rather than just physical movements, is a lot of the inflammation around her nose and upper lip,” which Logan claims “[lets] us know that this is coming from an authentic place.”
Putting on an act
Logan explained that emotional states have a profile, and things can usually shift after around four and a half seconds.
During the journey, Shirilla seems to relax, despite the situation that she’s in, and is seen rolling her head back and looking bored.
But as they approach the station, Logan feels she starts to perform as she realizes she should be more upset than she is if she’s not guilty of murder.
“When you’re watching somebody who’s performing, you’ll see a lot of crashes in between,” he told The U.S. Sun.
“So they’ll be emoting a specific way and then it’s almost like they remember like, ‘Oh, I should be sad right now.’ And then they’ll crash into sadness, something like that.
“You can see it start to kind of creep through the cracks of her rather reserved expression beforehand.”
This is where Logan returns to Shirilla’s “eyebrow activation.”
He claims Shirilla’s outer and inner eyebrows are working together at this point to show sadness, stress and anxiety.
Again, the corners of her nose are also activated, not in disgust, but trying to show she is upset, something he says he doesn’t often see.
Oscar-worthy performance
She is later seen sobbing during her trial before being locked up for 15 years to life on murder charges.
Shirilla starts to mix with people from different walks of life, and it’s years later when we see her sit down with film producers for her bombshell interview.
She is seen walking into the frame and sitting down at a table wearing her prison scrubs, her hair tied up in a large bun.
“The fact that she’s sitting down, crossing her arms, immediately lets us know that she’s probably feeling uncomfortable about what’s about to happen there and needs to block off and self-soothing a little bit,” Logan said.
Shirilla then activated her glabella – the smooth area of skin on her forehead located directly between the eyebrows and just above the bridge of her nose, Logan said.
He claims this was to give the impression she is empathetic, but instead of it being symmetrical, she delivered asymmetrical activation.
“Her right eyebrow does not have the same activation as her left eyebrow.
“Her left eyebrow is doing the exact same expression that we saw in the cruiser. Her right eyebrow is not.
“It’s an asymmetrical expression which lets us know this isn’t authentic empathy.
“This isn’t authentic pain or fear or grief that she’s feeling here. It’s forced.”
Logan said this was also visible further down the vein on the bottom half of her face.
She also began pursing her lips – something she would do in her performative TikTok videos, where she wanted to control how she was being perceived.
He said she is trying to convince the audience she is upset about the situation she is in, and victims’ deaths, but “her body is betraying her.”
“And then when we get to this specific interview she’s talking at a lower register, she has a little bit more husky to her voice,” he said.
“Some of the verbal tics that she uses as well have shifted. And my immediate thought was, this has to be something about the performance that she’s obviously performing.
“She wants people to feel a certain way. And so she shifted her tone, her speaking differently as well to perhaps support that.”
He feels not only her voice will have changed in prison, but her body language as she mixes with other inmates.
“I have no doubt in my mind that she’ll be adjusting her overall nonverbal behavior as well to better fit in and get to where she wants to be in that social circle as well,” he said.
To see the full interview with Logan, and other exclusive videos on Mackenzie Shirilla, visit our YouTube channel.
TOMMY Fury raced to be by Molly-Mae’s side for the birth of their second child as he chartered a private jet from boxing training camp to make it in time.
Molly-Mae has given birth to her and Tommy’s second bundle of joyCredit: InstagramTommy Fury chartered a private jet from Manchester to London to get there in time for the birth of baby number twoCredit: Instagram
But, the Netflix star has certainly put those rumours to bed as he stopped at nothing to put Molly at ease.
The 27-year-old flew on a private jet from his training camp in Manchester down to London earlier this week.
“Mollie went into labour yesterday, she had been in London for the past week while Tommy continued his training camp in Manchester ahead of his Eddie Hall fight.”
“Tommy flew straight down last night to be by her side as soon as she told him labour had started. They went to hospital this afternoon and the baby was born a few hours later,” the source continued.
Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury already share a daughter – Bambi, threeCredit: InstagramBusinesswoman Molly and Tommy announced the news they were expecting back in JanuaryCredit: Instagram
“The baby is absolutely perfect. Molly is exhausted but doing well. She’s so glad Tommy made it down for the birth as she was so worried he might not get there in time.”
But despite it all being a race against the clock, Molly’s boxer beau still managed to get there in time bearing gifts.
The source added: “Tommy rushed down with flowers, her favourite chocolates Ferrero Rocher and the blanket she wanted to wrap the baby in for the first pictures, as she’d forgotten it at home.”
In the first snap of their new babe, Tommy, Molly and Bambi all gathered around the hospital bed as they lay sleeping.
The picture appeared to be taken soon after the birth as stunning Molly was still in her hospital gown.
She looked utterly overjoyed as she beamed down at their new arrival.
The smitten couple captioned the announcement post: “…and then there were 4.”
There celebrity pals and fans went wild over the news and flooded their comments with congratulations.
In her latest video, Molly confessed she could announce the name by putting it on Tommy’s fight shorts as she normally take the lead on designing them.
After Arsenal‘s first league title for more than two decades was confirmed, tens of thousands of supporters rushed to Emirates Stadium to celebrate.
“I knew we were a sleeping giant that we needed to awaken in some way.” Kroenke said.
“We haven’t had a team, a squad like this in the social media age. Social media evolved and the Twittersphere and everything else around it.
“The instantaneous information, the ‘Banter Era’ – I’m aware of all this. I turned 46 last week.
“I’ve grown up around this and I’ve seen it all from my own perspective. I think that’s what I’m so proud to see. There was almost a time when you were a closeted Arsenal fan.”
But this success does not mean the end of the journey for Kroenke and his vision for the club, with the Gunners playing Paris-St Germain in the Champions League final on Saturday.
“I think I can think back and say that our stated goal was winning the Premier League, because if you can put yourself in contention for the Premier League, you’re in contention for everything else.” Kroenke said.
“Should we get a great result on Saturday, it’s not going to change or affect who we are. When you win something, the sun’s still going to come up the next day.
“You’ve got to get back to work and there are many teams trying to gain on you, including some historically great ones around the Premier League.
“So, we’re going to look to strengthen because we know that teams around us are going to get better. If you’re not trying to continually evolve and improve, you’re standing still.”
Steph recently appeared on Rich House, Poor House and was offered a job but she had no choice but to refuse the offer due to a family issue and unable to take on the long commute.
Alongside her mother Gail and her daughters – 12-year-old Amelia and seven-year-old Darcey, they swapped lives with wealthy Mr Whippy owner Joe Sealey on the Channel 5 series and their worlds couldn’t be more different.
At the time, Joe traded his six-bedroom estate – complete with cinema room, gym and indoor pool – for seven days in Steph’s three bedroom council house with a damaged ground floor and mould spreading through Amelia’s room.
Despite working six days a week from home in telesales, Steph struggles to cover essential costs. Once fundamental household expenses are paid, they’re left with just £98 per week for all other needs.
At the end of the swap, she was given a life-changing opportunity as Joe offered her a position on his sales team with a starting salary of £60,000 a year.
However Steph has revealed that she’s had to make the heartbreaking decision and turn down the job offer after the office moved to a different location.
Giving viewers an update, she took to her TikTok and explained that the relocation means she would have had to do a four hour round commute, which she says wouldn’t work due to being a single mum and her mum’s health deteriorating.
She said: “In relation to the job, I agree with all of you that it’s an amazing opportunity. Sadly due to the main office relocation it would mean a four hour round trip commuting for me, to be able to go there and take that job offer up.”
During the swap, Steph had no choice but to send her mum home after she became too unwell to continue with the programme and it seems her health is still a concern for Steph.
Steph explained: “As you all know I’m a single mum, I’ve got two beautiful girls. My amazing mum, whose health is not great, it’s not massively improved since the show, so it’s not viable for me to be able to travel a four hour round trip.
“I need to be closer to my girls and my mum but again it was an amazing opportunity that was put forward. Sadly the location did change in between and it’s just not viable for me to do that
“But I just again wanted to say a huge thank you to Joe, my production team, Channel 5 and most importantly every single one of you. It’s not easy to put yourself out there.”
Following a successful business meeting on the show, Steth was promised £20,000 from the initial sales proceeds but unfortunately the sale still hasn’t gone thorough.
Steph added: “Since filming last year, Joe has been tirelessly working with Kaspas trying to get the deal across the line, that obviously you would have seen me go and do the sales pitch for. At the moment, that hasn’t been completed but I know Joe is still working in the background trying to get that over the line for us.”
You can stream Rich House, Poor Holiday on Channel 5