Some men, when they hit a midlife crisis, buy a sports car or grow a ponytail. Alan Carr has bought a 19th century castle in the Scottish Borders with 17 bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a five storey Great Tower, turrets, a private chapel, and its own narrow gauge railway. I respect the commitment.
Ayton Castle, near Eyemouth, was on the market for £3.25 million, and Carr has snapped it up. The comedian, who managed to lie his way to victory on Celebrity Traitors at Ardross Castle in the Highlands, clearly developed a taste for Scottish turrets and has now secured his own.
Carr himself put it this way: “Since I was a boy in Northampton, I’ve always dreamt big, and have always been enchanted with the history and romance of a stately home. As I turn 50, I feel it’s time. All I want is a turret to call my own.”
The Disney Factor
The renovation will be filmed for a Disney+ series with the working title Castle Man, a nod to his Channel 4 talk show Chatty Man. An industry insider compared it to Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon show that turned Jeremy Clarkson’s agricultural adventures into one of the most watched programmes in the country. The logic is sound: take a well known personality, put them in an unfamiliar environment, and film the chaos.
Whether Carr can make a castle in the Borders as compelling as Clarkson made a farm in the Cotswolds remains to be seen. But the Scottish Borders could certainly use the publicity. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the country and one of the least visited, largely because everyone drives straight through it on the way to Edinburgh or the Highlands.
Ayton Castle Itself
The castle was designed by James Gillespie Graham, Scotland’s leading Gothic revival architect of his era. It sits on 106 acres of listed gardens and has a history stretching back to Norman settlers, when the De Vesci family built the first fortification on the site. The previous owners, who bought it in 2014, carried out substantial work including building the narrow gauge railway that runs through the grounds.
I have a soft spot for these kinds of projects. Scotland is full of extraordinary buildings that need investment, care, and attention. If Alan Carr wants to pour money and enthusiasm into one of them while entertaining millions of viewers, I struggle to see the downside. The Borders economy benefits, the castle gets restored, and we get to watch a comedian from Northampton try to figure out how a five storey tower works in a Scottish winter.
Good luck to him. He is going to need it. Scottish castles have a way of eating money faster than you can earn it, and the heating bills alone for 17 bedrooms will be educational. But if anyone can make it funny, it is Carr.
