Britain’s Secret Homes

Series one, episode two
This week Michael Buerk and Bettany Hughes amble chummily about Chiswick House as they take in numbers 40 to 31 of their ongoing countdown of the country’s best hidden pads. Ricky Tomlinson and Pete Best discuss the Casbah Club in Liverpool, where the Quarrymen played one of their first residencies, before mutating into the Silver Beetles and flying to Hamburg. Best, soon chucked out in favour of Ringo Starr, reckons the gig they played on their return was the start of Beatlemania.

Robert Pugh visits the mound of earth that Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr called home, and Twiggy shows us round Hartnell’s, the Mayfair dressmaker that made the Queen’s wedding and Coronation dresses. The less said about Ann Widdecombe and Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, the better, but it’s pretty good fun seeing Suffolk’s House in the Clouds, and a visit to the houses where Handel and Hendrix lived side by side (albeit separated by 200 odd years) yields the rare treat of hearing a baroque harpsichord cover of ‘Hey Joe’. All a bit aimless and incoherent, but harmless enough.