Jacob Rees-Mogg's wife Helena concerned she'll be seen as 'out of touch' on new TV series
Viewers learn that the former MP doesn't lift a finger around the house - because he has five staff and a wife to do it for him in their new reality TV series
by Nicola Methven · The MirrorToff Jacob Rees-Mogg says no one should be surprised to discover how he and his super-privileged family live, as shown in their new reality show Meet the Rees-Moggs.
For a man who owns a sprawling country mansion plus a home in London, wears a top hat, holds a family black-tie dinner every Saturday and employs five staff including his own nanny from the 1960s, it seems to have finally clicked that nothing is going to stop him from coming across as an outdated oddity. “You shouldn’t pretend to be something you’re not,” he says at a screening of the first episode. “There’s no hiding it and no one should be surprised that we live the way we live.”
Asked if he had concerns about letting the cameras into his personal life, he said: “I’ve said so many things, sometimes silly things, there’s nothing I could say that could make it better, or worse.” Well, we’ll see about that.
His wife Helena de Chair (worth £45million, we’re told) can barely utter a sentence without saying “whoops” at the end, but does seem to realise there could be a downside to all this for their six children aged 7-17, Peter, Mary, Thomas, Anselm, Alfred and Sixtus.. “The older kids probably wonder what their friends will make of it,” she admits, adding, “I hope we don’t come across as completely out of touch, absolutely awful people.” Whoops indeed.
The things we learn about her hard-right Tory husband, who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and lost his North East Somerset seat to Labour’s Dan Morris this summer, aren’t that fascinating. He has a weakness for cream buns from Greggs, he collects religious relics that might be fake, he barely eats any vegetables. When the camera catches him without his jacket on, showing his braces (gasp!), he goes on about his “state of undress”.
For me, the star of the show- on Discovery+ from December 2 - is caretaker/handyman/butler Shaun who cleans the Bentley, polishes the silver and chauffeurs them all around. At one point he is disparaging about the local who has defaced a sign outside Rees-Mogg’s mother’s house with the words “POSH T***” Shaun says even if they’d used paint or permanent marker, he’d still have been able to get it off. “They should have taken it down and smashed it up,” he says, giving everyone ideas for the future.
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