I’ve been watching quite a lot of MTV Cribs recently and apart from Alex James from Blur, whose house was fab, I have to say that I haven’t been very impressed with the things people buy when they are stinking rich.  It made me think about what I would buy if I were stinking rich.  This is the showy, ostentatiously ‘me, me, me’ stuff you understand.  If I were disgustingly rich I have lots of plans for charitable stuff and helping people out, as I’m sure most of us do.  Except those idiots who say that their life isn’t going to change and die bloated on takeaway pizzas in front of thirty years worth of Bill episodes on Blu Ray, obviously.  So, take it as read that I will be kind to the planet, animals, people with one leg and all me mates.  Here is the list of outrageously selfish things I would buy if I were as rich as Bill Gates

 

On Cribs they always show you their cars.  Here is what I would have:

 

• A retro Morris Traveller Van thingy, you know the ones with the green paint and the wood panelling.
• A purple bubble car just big enough for me and a packet of hobnobs
• An ordinary Morris Minor for every day purposes
• A tandem
• A really old car, like Brum, made big.  I don’t care what type it is really, I just think they look lovely with big old headlamps and stuff.
• A penny farthing (just for a laugh)
• A routemaster bus (and all the outfits. I want to work the ticket machine)

 

No twenty four inch rims or industrial sized Hummers for me thank you very much.

 

They always show you their fridges too.  I have a pale blue Smeg fridge which I love.  It’s wildly impractical, but I love its bulbous shape and its general pale blueness.  If I were rich I’d get them to make me a bank of blue fridges and freezers which would mean they were actually big enough to hold all the food, but would still look funky and retro.  I would also have an ice dispenser, because I like ice and I like having it dispensed.  I always feel decadent when someone dispenses ice about my person.

 

Inside the fridge they always have either:

 

• Organic food pre-prepared by their chef who follows their every move in his own customised Bentley
• Disgusting amounts of junk food, sausages on sticks and t.v. dinners
• Only drinks
• Nothing at all because they never eat in

 

My fridge would be a walking advert for Ocado and Selfridge’s food hall.  There would be a lot of San Pellegrino, because it’s very nice.  There would also be a lot of food. I mean, a lot of food.  I like food A LOT.  It would all be nice food (Jason and the kids can have separate fridges), but I would be going for quantity AND quality.  People would win competitions to come and nibble things out of my fridge, that’s how good it would be.  I'd have an ice cream maker too because I've always fancied one of those.

 

There would be no fridge magnets of any kind.

 

Alex James has a library.  It looked like a great library.  My only problem with it was that it was rather small.  I would like a library, but when I have a library it will be an actual library, with a librarian, and fires and big step ladders and huge chairs and bean bags.  There will be no television of any kind.  It will not just be full of old books, it will be full of every kind of book.  There will be an Amazon delivery every hour.  I will definitely have the entire Oxford English Dictionary for starters, and not on CD Rom.  I’ve always wanted to own the OED.  That would be so cool.  I will have a separate kids section with smaller shelves and chairs for midgets.  I will leave the library to the nation when I die.  It will be fab.  I will have library stamps too.  I like the idea of doing the stamping.

 

I’m definitely having a pantry too.  A big one with slate floors and interesting looking cupboards full of stuff that you might want to snack on in the night.  It will have a big table with a marble top in case I want to roll pastry, or make cheese, or just lounge about on a big marble topped table in my Manolos, wearing my Philip Treacey hat.

 

My kitchen will not have granite work tops I don’t care how fashionable they are.  I think they’re naff.  I’m having real tree wood, gently oiled by my horny handed gardener and man about the estate.  As far as oven’s go. I’ll have whatever Gordon Ramsay’s got thanks.  We won’t bother with a separate dining room, we’ll just have a huge fuck off kitchen which would be the size of most people’s houses.  There will be sofas and comfy chairs and a big no nonsense wooden table, none of these round circular things with matching napkins and plates the size of Mars.

 

There will be a huge integral tea urn with hot water on tap for endless hot beverages, sod the Kristal champagne.  There will be mugs for everyone (except my best friend Rachel who prefers a cup and saucer).  There will be much Emma Bridgewater.  It is likely there will be quite a lot of Nigella.  There will also be extensive trips to that lovely cookware shop I can’t think of the name of which is now on Marylebone High Street but which is also near Bibendum (Ah! Divertimenti).  We will need a lot of cupboard space.

 

There will be lots of paintings and arty stuff.  I may even get Tracey Emin in to do an installation in the hall, as long as it doesn’t upset the children.  Andy Goldsworthy can sculpt the garden and Diarmuid Gavin can prune the hedges into the shape of space ships.  I want a daguerreotype, preferably that one that Chuck Close did of Kate Moss if it’s available.  I’d also like a Stanley Spencer because they’re very soothing.  I’d like that Epstein sculpture of Jacob and the Angel, but I don’t think that the Tate have finished with it yet.

 

I’m having an artist’s studio so that I can give it a go.  I want one of those potter’s wheels and a potter to teach me how to pot as well.  I had a go once, it was brilliant.

 

I detest the gym, so we’re not having one of those.  I am having a proper swimming pool though.  An indoor one with non hairy floors and lots of fun stuff.  I’d quite like one like they’ve got in the Sanctuary in Covent Garden.  It’s got a swing over it.  How cool is that?

 

In Cribs there are invariably rooms for show where nobody actually goes in them.  These always seem to be dining rooms.  We won’t have that problem as we always use every room in every house we’ve ever lived in, usually for several conflicting things, all at once.  We will have lots of useless furniture though.  I am mad for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, although I prefer his painting to his furniture.  I do love his chairs though, even though they are bloody uncomfortable.  I will have to have some of his chairs so that we can all avoid sitting on them.  I might have a chaise longue as well in some ridiculously expensive material.  It won’t matter about the material, because you can’t actually sit on them properly anyway.  They just look louche and fabulous.

 

I will have a walk in wardrobe.  I know it’s very common, but there’s something brilliant about the idea of having whole rooms devoted solely to your extensive clothing collection.  Mine will have lots of lovely things in it including:

 

• Lots of Dior by John Galliano
• Lots of Alexander McQueen
• Lots of Armani
• Ozwald Boateng suits
• Philip Treacey hats
• Christian Louboutin shoes
• Manolo Blahnik Shoes
• Paul Smith everything (and some carpets and stuff)
• Alice Temperley things of great beauty
• Ghost exquisiteness
• Coast and Fenn Wright and Manson just for mucking around in
• Hundreds of pairs of Fat Face socks
• Mulberry handbags
• Undies courtesy of Agent Provocateur

 

I don’t do jewellery so you’re safe from my list of blingtastic stuff.

 

I’m having a big bathroom but you can keep your whirlpool jets and gold taps thanks.  Jason and I once stayed in the suite at the Malmaison in Leeds which has a giant square bath bigger than a king size bed which is so deep you can almost swim in it. You had to fill it with a big stand pipe thing and it had huge shower heads in the ceiling in clusters.  I’m having that one.  It even had waterproof pillows.  I’m having those too.

 

I’ll have another bathroom with a huge roll top bath in it for the days when I feel like being Victorian.  I’m also having another bathroom with one of those baths I saw when Boy George had money and wasn’t selling t-shirts down the market.  He had a huge copper bath that looked a bit like the one in the painting The Death of Marat.  And I’m having a wet room and a Hammam and loads of Jo Malone stuff to put in them.  In fact I will be known as that batty old lady with a hundred bathrooms but who still smells of wee and Yardley Lavender.

 

They always have cinema rooms in Cribs.  Given the fact that Jason has spent the last twelve months cannibalizing our living room into a cinema it is inevitable that we will have one too, despite my lack of enthusiasm.  I’m decorating it though.  I want it to look like a Fin De Siecle Paris brothel, but with comfier seats.  That’ll learn him.  I think we’ll have a theatre too, and invite travelling theatre troupes to come and perform Ibsen after breakfast.

 

We will have a branch of Starbucks just off the hall, where most of the Cribsters seem to put their non usable Versace themed dining rooms.  I will not have Versace themeing anywhere.  I think Versace is cheap and nasty.  Nor will we be having any Swarovski crystal anywhere in the house.  Instead we will have one wall of the downstairs loo painted in that blackboard paint and a box of chalks handy so people can write down their thoughts as they pooh.  It will be very therapeutic.

 

One of the other loo rooms will be wallpapered in tube maps of the world.  I like to think of travelling while I am on the toilet.  It helps to pass the time.  My mum and dad have their downstairs loo decorated in ordnance survey maps.  It’s very restful.

 

Floors will be stone and wood, not shiny.  I don’t do shiny.  I like hand woven rugs.  Kilims are nice even though they aren’t very fashionable any more.  I don’t care.  I’d like some Bill Amberg leather flooring as well, with underfloor heating.

 

Other important features of the house include:

 

• High ceilings
• Lots of windows and light
• Secret passages (but not naff old fashioned ones, cool, Napoleon Solo type ones)
• An underground lair
• Underground passages to access underground lair
• Swings indoors (but not in bedrooms, just for mucking about purposes)
• Corridors you can ride a bike down for when it’s wet outside
• A room with a bouncy castle and a trampolene in it
• An orangery, one with real oranges in it, and pineapples and lemons and ferns and cool, hairy plants, with glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly.
• A Bat pole
• Some kind of slide for when the hips are too knackered for the Bat pole.
• An indoor stream with loads of pretend ducks and sticks for hooking them out.  I like those themed ducks.  We'll have one of each.
• An entire soundproof floor of the house for the children
• A ballroom with a great sprung floor and fabulous acoustics where I could have nights of excessive dancing.  It must have a glitter ball
• A sound proof room with the biggest drum kit in the world in, so that I can take drum lessons at last.

 

Outside the house would be:

 

• Woods with wildlife
• An entire play village like Petit Trianon at Versailles
• Lots of watery based stuff
• Walled gardens with a secret garden for the kids
• Orchards
• Organic fruit and veg
• A herb garden I can wander around with my trug wearing my Philip Treacey hat and waving secateurs.
• A huge playground for the kids with tree houses and dangerously cool stuff like they used to have in playgrounds when I was a kid
• A sculpture park
• A potting shed where Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Diarmuid can plan their next move.  Hugh will be my advisor on the estate and provide me with piglets and chicks and such like.

 

And that’s just for starters.  It’d be so cool they’d have to do a week’s worth of Cribs just on me!  It’d be awesome, and I’d invite you round for tea if you asked nicely.