Handy Andy – real name Andy Kane – was a hugely popular member of the Changing Rooms team with viewers. But what has he been up to since he left the show in 2004?
Popular 90s DIY show Changing Rooms was a firm favourite on our screens, but the cast look very different to nowadays.
Viewers of the BBC show tuned in weekly to see the team take on some major home transformations, making the stars of the show household names in the process.
Hosted by Carol Smillie, Changing Rooms drew in a whopping 10 million viewers at its peak on BBC One and created some iconic moments – who can forget when a £6,000 teapot collection was destroyed in one fell swoop by a floating shelf in series 8?
Designers Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Linda Barker, and Anna Ryder Richardson were the ones tasked with helping members of the public transform a room in someone else’s house – be it a friend, family member or neighbour. And then to help them make it a reality, the show’s handyman, Handy Andy (Andy Kane) swooped in.
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DIY expert Andy appeared on the show from 1996-2004 and was a key player in the transformation process. But what has he been up to in the years since?
After the show ended, Andy landed a role on the American version of the programme, named Trading Spaces, and he also presented three shows for UK Style, Room Rival , Garden Rivals and Streetcombers.
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One of his biggest programmes was Increase Your House Price By Ten Grand, which saw Andy work with a team to increase a house’s value by £10,000 in just three days with a £1,000 budget.
Andy has also appeared on I’m Famous And Frightened, Cirque de Celebrite and The Adam And Joe Show, and he has hosted a number of BBC Primary Geography programmes since 2008. He is happily married to his wife Geraldine and together they have four children.
Andy was a popular member of the team and the chatty Cockney proved to be a big hit with viewers too. While he frequently impressed with his DIY, it didn’t always go to plan, and he later spoke about his most major mishap – when the teapot collection was destroyed.
Designer Linda had commissioned a floating shelf to house them but weighed it down with heavy books, causing the shelf to collapse overnight.
Andy told the Metro: “It went wrong because they put too much weight on it. The shelf was obviously just for show and just the teapots on it would have been fine, but then they started loading up with books at the bottom.
“I did say at the time that books are very heavy but they carried on and you know, it’s one of them things. When it happened, it was really, really awful, everyone felt really bad, but now you just laugh about it. But it was good entertainment, wasn’t it?
“In other episodes of the show they’d mount chairs on the wall or hang chairs from ceilings and as a builder, you’re like ‘really?!’, but that’s interior design for you.”