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Industry Information >>Bath & Toilet Appliances>>Splashing out: Extravagant Jonathan Ross spends 40,000 on a marble ...

Splashing out: Extravagant Jonathan Ross spends 40,000 on a marble ...

When BBC bosses handed Jonathan Ross an £18million contract,some licence-fee payers may have thought it was like pouring moneydown the plughole.

And they were not entirely wrong.

For it has emerged that the television presenter has spent anastonishing £40,000 on a huge marble bathtub which weighsnearly three-quarters of a ton.

The installation of the bespoke tub is part of a transformation ofhis family's North London home.

Ross is estimated to have spent close to half a million poundsturning the interior of his seven-bedroom Georgian property intowhat one recent visitor described as 'a 17th century baroque palaceas seen through a kaleidoscope, drunk'.

To achieve the desired effect, Ross bypassed the usual trip to Ikeaor Homebase. Instead the 47-year-old father of three employed oneof Britain's most exclusive interior designers to come up withsomething more in keeping with his extrovert personality.

Luxury on tap: Carved from marble, a bathtub similar to the onethat Jonathan Ross has had installed at his home

The bathtub, which is hewn from a single rock of marble, was madeextra-large for Ross after an initial version was deemed to be toosmall. Two rooms of the remodelled property boast skirting boards,cornicing and picture rails covered with real gold leaf.

The leaf costs around £150 a square metre to apply and waspainted on by Italian experts more usually employed re-touchingRenaissance church interiors

In another room a zebra-print shag-pile carpet is teamed with a£7,000 glass shelving unit into which are embedded hundredsof tiny fairy lights. The presenter's love of hi-tech gizmos hasseen him construct a bizarre three-storey cupboard that, at thepress of a button, rises from the floor.

Each of the cupboard's 'storeys' contains a honeycomb of capsules,each of which is big enough to store a pair of Ross's brightlycoloured shoes.

Upmarket area: The front of the family home

There's a remote-controlled toilet seat: the lid lifts on command.And, appropriately enough for the presenter of Film 2008, there's atelevision viewing room with a screen projected onto the ceiling.Ross sits in a 15,000 space-ship style reclining chair - built byDutch designer Marcel Wanders - to watch it.

The redesign has taken over a year to complete and all contractorshave been sworn to secrecy. Mobile phones were banned from the siteto prevent builders taking photographs.

However, one recent visitor to the house told the Mail: 'It isabsolutely amazing inside. It is like he said, "This is exactlywhat I want - money is no object". It must have cost hundred andhundreds of thousands of pounds. The whole place is amazinglyostentatious and fun.

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