Homes Under the Hammer's Martin Roberts asks fans for help and 'moral support'

11 February 2024 , 09:14

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Homes Under the Hammer's Martin Roberts asks fans for help and 'moral support'

As the presenter of one of TV's most iconic renovation shows, you'd think Martin Roberts has a little black book packed with handymen.

But it seems that the 60-year-old still likes to get his hands dirty after over two decades fronting the show. Yesterday he told fans that he was busy renovating a bathroom - and was struggling with the tiling.

Speaking in a video posted to Instagram, he said: "I need some moral support, I think I've found my new most hated DIY thing... grouting. If you've never done it, can I advise you never even give it a second thought? Don't bother. It is so tediously terrible.

Martin Roberts was visibly frustrated in the social clip (martinrobertstv / Instagram)

He has fronted Homes Under The Hammer for over 20 years (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)

"So I'm just redoing the bathroom, and this is grout, this is what grout looks like, it's like sloppy stuff and you have to put it on the walls like that and squish it in a bit and pass it about a bit and get it into these holes. I reckon there's about a mile of stuff I've got to grout, and then you've got to get the stuff off [the tiles] so you've got to use a sponge, and if you don't get it off soon enough it's like a nightmare."

Last November saw the twentieth anniversary of Homes Under The Hammer, and in a press release marking the show's impressive milestone, Martin reflected that he had visited thousands of properties. He said: "Who would have thought… back in 2003 when I uttered those immortal lines ‘let’s find out what happened when it went under the hammer’ for the first time, that I’d still be saying them… 20 years, 28 series, around 1,700 programmes and I reckon 3,000 properties I’ve personally visited, later but I am.”

Mum sells home for £18,000 profit after sprucing up the garden

He has visited over 3,000 houses on the BBC 1 show (BBC)

He added that he wasn't planning on quitting the show anytime soon, and would “carry on until my plumbing fails, massive cracks appear and I’m no longer fit for refurbishment”.

In 2022 that almost happened, when he was rushed to hospital with heart problems. He was told he had "less than a few hours to live" after doctors failed to spot a problem with his heart. He had to undergo an emergency operation on his heart in order to save his life after he developed heart pain when his pericardium - the fluid-filled sack that protects the organ - expanded. The fluid build-up ended up putting pressure on his heart and he had to be rushed to the hospital.

He added to The Sun: "I was rushed into hospital and had an emergency operation where they stabbed a tube into the sack around the heart and drew a litre and a half of fluid." The TV star added that if he wasn't "in the right place" he would've "been dead".

Emma Gritt