Anne Robinson, 80, leaving Costwolds after 40 years over aging concern
After more than 40 years living in the Cotswolds, Anne Robinson is upping sticks and moving to London over fears of getting older alone.
The former host of The Weakest Link and Countdown, 80, has decided to make the move out of her Grade II-listed converted barn to be closer to her daughter, broadcaster Emma Wilson, as well as her two grandchildren.
Robinson said that her sadness about leaving the area, where she moved to in 1988, is outweighed by her concerns she’ll one day be escorted from her home in an ambulance, adding: “I just know it will be sadder.”
“I run, do weights and Pilates, but I just can’t legislate for the next five years,” she told The Times.
”I don’t want Emma sitting at lunch saying to someone, as people say to me, ‘Oh my mother, you know she’s in Somerset and now the carer’s gone off sick – I’m having to drive for an hour and a half when there’s a crisis’.”
Robinson has owned properties in London before, but this is the first time she’ll be moving permanently to the city in decades, and she has found a place by Hyde Park, right around the corner from her daughter.
The TV star, who gave up driving due to worsening eyesight, said she’s also happy she can walk to lunch with friends instead of relying on others to pick her up. She added that her daughter will teach her how to use the Tube.
Alongside the 18th-century Cotswolds barn, which she spent two years renovating in the late 2000s, Robinson also owns residences on Fifth Avenue in New York, as well as in the Hamptons.
She downsized from a £3.5m eight-bedroom mansion to move into the previously dilapidated property, which is being listed for £4.5m.
After splitting from her husband, John Penrose, in 2007, Robinson allegedly installed a ground-floor guest wing called the “I Hate My Husband Suite”.
In May 2024, Robinson revealed that she had already “spread” her £50m fortune across her family members to save her assets from going to the “taxman”
“I’ve given it all away – I don’t want the taxman to have it,” she told Saga. “I’ve spread it about quite a lot, to the children. They may as well enjoy it now.”
Robinson added she has “genuinely no idea” if her net worth is £50m, but said she “can’t think there’s anything I really want except my good health and the family happiness”.
In the UK, inheritance tax is charged at 40 per cent on estates worth over £325,000, with a higher threshold for homes that are passed on to direct descendants
The UK has a “seven-year rule” that states if a beneficiary receives an inheritance gift less than seven years before the bestower’s death, they still pay inheritance tax.
Gifts given three years before the giver’s death are taxed at 40 per cent, while anything gifted up to the seven-year mark are charged on a sliding scale known as “taper relief”.
