Hearing impaired: Dom in a Trigger Happy TV sketch
Comedian and writer Dom Joly is best known for Trigger Happy TV, the hidden camera prank series broadcast on Channel 4 since 2000, writes York Membery.
More recently, the 56-year-old, who has written several travel books, has appeared on reality TV shows including Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls and Pilgrimage.
He and his Canadian wife Stacey live in Cheltenham and have a son and daughter who are now in their twenties.
What did your parents teach you about money?
Nothing, which is really irritating, which is why I’m financially illiterate.
I had a blessed childhood in the Christian part of Lebanon, where my late father, a Fleet Air Arm pilot during World War II, was in business.
But I was sent to boarding school in England when I was seven and since then I’ve led a somewhat fractured existence between the UK and war-torn Lebanon. I still feel a huge emotional connection to Lebanon.
After my parents divorced when I was 18, I was separated from my father for a dozen years, so although we reconnected towards the end of his life, he was a different person when he died in mid-2000. the 80 years. My mother died last year at 93 years old.
Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?
I had no idea what I was going to do when I left university in London and spent most of my 20s jumping from one thing to another (be it driving vans or working as a producer at ITN) before breaking into the world of television. comedy. But even now, one minute I’m doing great financially and the next I’m like, ‘Oh, shit!’ But I think it’s those ups and downs in my career that have given me the drive to succeed.
Have you ever been paid silly money?
Trigger Happy TV was a real moneymaker, and I made over £1 million from DVD sales; It is the gift that keeps on giving. So I’m doing a Trigger Happy tour next year to commemorate their 25th anniversary.
Even now, after all these years, people still shout ‘Hey, I can’t hear you’, my catchphrase I used to shout into a giant mobile phone, when they see me, not that I care.
My other big source of income was a six-figure sum (an incredible amount of money) from filming two television commercials for a telecommunications company. They were never used because they bought the company, but the money paid for my children’s school fees.
What was the best year of your financial life?
Any year where I can afford to travel, eat well, and have fun is my best year.
Most expensive thing you bought for fun?
A wooden Riva Aquarama speedboat that I bought 20 years ago, when I used to vacation with my family in the lake-filled “countryside” of Ontario every summer. It’s just the coolest boat, although I did occasionally have some trouble on the water. We stopped going to Canada regularly when the kids grew up, so I sold it after a few years.
What has been your biggest money mistake?
I sold my flat in London’s Notting Hill to Salman Rushdie for a lot of money in 2005. If I’d kept it (it’s now worth more than £12m), I would never have needed to work again. In retrospect, I also shouldn’t have ended Trigger Happy TV after doing a couple of series and Christmas specials. But he was devastated after working so hard on the show and wanted a change.
I should have sat down before making such a hasty decision.
Best money decision you’ve ever made?
Buying a property in the right place at the right time, before an area becomes super trendy.
I bought my first flat in Notting Hill for £117,000 in 1992, when it was still a no-go area.
I then bought the flat below for £220,000 in 2001, put them together and sold the property to Salman Rushdie for £1.3 million.
Bargain: Dom sold his flat to Salman Rushdie
Similarly, I bought (and sold) a house in the Cotswolds before it became overcrowded with Londoners and became totally unbearable. However, I’m sure people said the same thing when I moved there. Apparently the novelist Joanna Trollope moved away when Alex James from Blur and I arrived in the 90s!
Do you have a pension?
No, because I don’t really trust people who work in finance. It’s probably due to my father, who distrusted the stock market and referred to it as “a casino.” Anyway, I don’t see myself retiring: I’d be completely bored. I plan to keep working until I drop.
Do you have any property?
I own a Regency style house in Cheltenham, where I have lived with my wife and family for the last five years.
When I was a child, the city was a nursing home, but it has changed and now has good restaurants and a lot of cultural offerings.
I have visited many towns of similar size and there is nowhere else.
I prefer to live. However, I still consider myself a digital nomad: wherever I put my hat is my home.
If you were chancellor, what would you do?
I would make sure big corporations paid their fair share of tax, introduce a flat 20 per cent tax on everyone and hit anyone worth more than £5 million with a one per cent super tax just to give the country a boost.
What is your number one financial priority?
Save some money – to make up for all those decades of not saving!
- The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels in a Strange World by Dom Joly is available now. Dom Joly: The Conspiracy Tour is on tour until November 7 (domjoly.tv/dom-joly-tour).
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