Homes gossip

Hoult stages his own bail-out

Clash of the Titans star Nicholas Hoult may be the toast of the West End with his current stage debut in New Boy at Trafalgar Studios. But he has no plans to leave the comfort of his parents’ home in suburban Berkshire and buy his own pad.

Gangling Hoult became a star at 12 when he appeared opposite Hugh Grant in the romcom About A Boy and later played the lead in the racy TV drama Skins.

Remaining in Wokingham with his BA pilot father Roger and piano teacher mother Glenis has its own dramas. Having returned home late at night from the Baftas ceremony he discovered the basement flooded and spent the rest of the night bailing out. “Not good when you’re slightly hung-over,” he winces.

In 2007 Halifax Estate Agency named Wokingham as having “the best quality of life in Great Britain”.

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Shock artist Alison Jackson, scourge of the Queen, Paris Hilton, Tony Blair, Ralph Fiennes and many others, is selling her Chelsea artists’ studio-cum-home for £3 million through John D Wood.

“It’s a wonderfully extravagant space with high ceilings and wide picture windows that is perfect for entertaining in,” reports a friend. “But it’s a bit impractical as a home as it has only one-and-a-half bedrooms.”

The feisty Southsea-born photographer is famed for her lookalike pictures of celebs in compromising positions. She shot “Prince Harry” in his infamous SS uniform fondling a girl with a Hitler moustache and silk stockings, “David Beckham” and “Tom Cruise” comparing sizes at a urinal and “Princess Diana” and “Dodi Fayed” petting their new mixed-race baby.

Alison’s BBC2 comedy series Double Take won a Bafta, with many victims secretly enjoying their lampooning.

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Strutt & Parker is selling a rare lateral conversion in Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge for £10.5 million.

The newly-refurbished four-bedroom sixth-floor property adjoins the vast £150 million white-stucco mansion being carved out of two eight-storey blocks by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

“Two flats have been joined together creating one of the finest properties in one of the best residential addresses in London,” say the agents. “The square is a particular favourite with Russians and Arabs being near Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Hyde Park.”

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Antonia Graham, owner of the chic home-furnishing chain Graham & Green, is selling her five-storey Notting Hill house for £1,995,000 through Bective Leslie Marsh. But she’s not moving far away.

“Antonia wants to be closer to her son Jamie, daughter-in-law Louise and grandson Max in Kensal Green,” explains an aide. The four-bedroom white-stucco house, with a self-contained basement flat, is close to Antonia’s flagship Elgin Crescent store.

She began the business - patronised by celebs such as Sienna Miller, Robert Plant, Annie Lennox and Matthew Williamson - in 1974 with Henrietta Green, founder of the Borough Food Market.

She increasingly spends time at her holiday home in Goa, from where she commissions Indian textiles, furniture and other artefacts.