Fern Britton opens up about emotional new series No Place Like Home

Virgin Radio

3 Jan 2023, 12:24

TV presenter Fern Britton is back on the box for new Channel 5 series, No Place Like Home. 

The series, which kicks off tomorrow night (Wednesday 4th January), sees six celebrities explore the areas they grew up in, learning more about themselves, and the places they called home, along the way. 

Alongside Fern (who will visit Buckinghamshire), the stars taking part in No Place Like Home include Ben Miller returning to Nantwich, JJ Chalmers heading to Edinburgh, Chris Kamara visiting Middlesbrough, Amanda Abbington to Hertfordshire and Victoria Derbyshire returning ‘home’ to Bury and Littleborough (Greater Manchester).

In Fern’s episode, she will take a look at her old family home, which holds the deep, dark secrets of a maid who used to live there. 

Speaking to Tom Allen, standing in on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, the former This Morning presenter shared why this new series was a bit of an emotional one. 

She explained: “You think you know where you grew up and when you were little and where you went to school and where you rode your bike about the lanes and things. You think you know it pretty well, but there's all this stuff that people have kept secret from you.”

The house Fern grew up in was in a small town called Gerrards Cross, which was nearby to many of the UK’s filming and production studios, where her father, actor Tony Britton, often used to work. 

When host Tom confessed watching the episode made him a bit teary-eyed, Fern admitted she felt just as touched, adding: “It’s something calling you from the past that does start to make you cry.”

“I was only a baby, but we moved out to Gerrad’s Cross to be in this lovely house. Unfortunately, my parents' marriage immediately broke up. So I lived in that house with my mum and my sister. I went back there for this programme, and I haven't been back for…I'm now 65, that's a long time. I was taken through the history of the house, before even we moved in.”

No Place Like Home starts on Channel 5 on Wednesday 4th January at 9pm and continues weekly.