À la maison avec les Rees-Moggs ! L’émission de télé-réalité la plus improbable de Grande-Bretagne

Some reality TV stars do it for the money. Others to boost their popularity and launch their own perfume or underwear range. And a high proportion embrace cosmetic surgery and look very impressive in swimwear.

All of which makes Jacob Rees-Mogg, his wife Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair and their family – who star in a new six-part series, Meet The Rees-Moggs, for the Discovery Channel – rather stand out from the crowd.

It also begs the question, why?

For starters, Jacob is already rich, famous and tightly buttoned and knotted at all times.

‘Always, always a tie! Never an open neck. If he didn’t wear a tie, his head might fall off,’ jokes Helena, who is also worth £45million.

Also, neither of them had watched a second of reality TV before signing up with the production company that made At Home With The Furys, about the Gypsy King boxer, his wife Paris, and their six children. ‘I don’t watch any television – apart from Jacob on GB News, of course,’ says Helena.

But also, they are bound to get an awful lot of flack.

Because while Jacob has many supporters who insist he is kind and empathetic and unfailingly hard-working and courteous, there are a lot of people who are not quite so keen.

Who shout ‘w****r!’ at him across the street. Who daubed ‘Posh t**t’ on the Jacob for MP board outside his mother’s house in Somerset. Who loathe his very strong views on abortion, gay marriage and immigration.

Who have never quite forgiven him for lounging on the benches in the House of Commons like a sulky teenager during a crunch Brexit debate back in September 2019.

And who were thrilled to bits when, back on July 4 and after 14 years, he lost the formerly safe North East Somerset and Hanham seat to Labour’s Dan Norris.

All of which is covered in glorious Technicolor in the first two episodes of their new show.

Didn’t he worry – if not about himself and Helena, but about their six children, Peter Theodore Alphege, Mary Anne Charlotte Emma, Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan , Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam, Alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius and Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher (all named after medieval monks, saints and bishops)?

The eldest, Peter, has already received hate mail, something Jacob slams as ‘vile and unfair’.

‘The truth is, if your name is Rees-Mogg and your father is in politics, you can’t hide. You’ve had it anyway,’ he says breezily as we sit in his upstairs drawing room of their £5 million townhouse, a hop from the Palace of Westminster.

So, instead, they have shared it all.

The black-tie family dinners every Saturday in Gournay Court – the gorgeous nine-bedroom, 17th-century country pile in

Somerset which they bought for £2.9 million in 2010 and is festooned in enormous portraits, many of Jacob.

The gatherings of the local hunt on their gravel drive. The private chapel where Jacob says his prayers each night and keeps his collection of religious relics. The endless mountains of mashed potato the family devours.

The staff giggling about how Jacob likes everything but his socks ironed with spray starch – because ‘he likes a bit of stiffness’.

And then we’re all back to London for the weekdays – with Nanny (aka Veronica Crook, who has worked for the Rees-Mogg family since 1959 and was Jacob’s nanny too) bustling about with the youngest three in the townhouse with still more family portraits – including one of Nanny, right by the kitchen door, wearing exactly the pink jumper and pearls she’s sporting today.

The series starts on May 22 2024, when Rishi unexpectedly fired the election starting gun, and runs to Bonfire Night, devoting plenty of time to the end of Jacob’s political career, including footage of him losing his seat, on a stage next to a member of the Raving Looney party wearing a balaclava printed with baked beans.

‘He was dressed as brunch!’ laughs Helena.

Most of us would blanch, but according to Helena, Jacob was made to withstand all sorts.

‘He’s got the requisite thick skin – the hide of a rhino,’ she says. ‘I fervently wish people without thick skins didn’t go into politics. Jacob never gets upset.’

‘Why would I?’ Jacob says. ‘If you stand for things you have to recognise that some other people won’t agree with you.

‘So I always thank them politely for their support.’

But Helena is not quite so well armoured and was still umming and ah-ing about the show when the election suddenly bumped them into filming. ‘I was worried. Very worried,’ she says. ‘One sees oneself in the mirror, obviously, but on screen – oh dear! And hearing your voice on camera. To me it sounds completely neutral – neither egregiously posh nor particularly regional. Then, shock horror, when I hear it on camera… You braying toff! Shut up!

‘At one point I thought I’d have to keep my mouth shut and be invisible for six months.’

Happily, she did not. Because she is the total star of the show.

Funny, sharp, full of brilliant one-liners as (with the help of a staff of five) she juggles two enormous homes, a youngest child in the tantrum phase and a camera crew – so delightful, though one of the cameramen ditched us for Strictly’.

When the production company first got in touch, Jacob assumed it was a hoax. But it piqued his interest, so he passed it to his agent to double-check.

‘Doing TV is a careful balance,’ he observes.

But he liked the idea of this because he felt that, unlike I’m A Celebrity, or Strictly – not that he has been asked on either – would be about politics. ‘They say politics is showbusiness for ugly people,’ says Helena. ‘Sorry, darling. I don’t think that, obviously’.

‘It’s probably true,’ he says. ‘But this was the chance to show behind the scenes at my constituency surgery – that sort of thing,’ he adds.

Or it would have been, had he not lost his seat in episode two.

Perhaps a stint in the jungle with Coleen, Barry, Tulisa et al might have been kinder on his family. But, as it turned out, they all loved it.

Especially Sean Goodwin, Jacob’s butler, who does everything from cider-making to chauffeuring, to removing unkind Rees-Mogg graffiti with petrol, to talking fondly and gruffly about ‘The Boss Man’, and who will probably soon have his own TV show. Sean’s wife Julie, the housekeeper/cook was rather less keen.

‘Initially, she insisted that only her hands could be filmed, but towards the end she comes out of her shell,’ says Jacob.

But even if he had been asked, Jacob would never survive in the jungle. ‘Far too uncomfortable! I like my creature comforts [lovely Sean brings him instant coffee and The Times newspaper in bed every morning] and I’m a fussy eater,’ he cries.

‘It would be disastrous,’ says Helena. ‘He only likes nursery food from the 1950s.’

‘I like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. And rice pudding and bread and butter pudding. Proper food. I don’t like rice, or noodles, or curry. Or funny vegetables like red cabbage. Or carrots or peas. Or broad beans.’

‘Or salad. Which is rabbit food for girls, apparently,’ adds Helena. ‘He was asked on Celebrity Bake Off years ago, but I’m sure he could definitely make toast. I’ve just never seen it.’

Presumably he’s never needed to, what with staff coming out of his ears and lovely Nanny on hand for most of his life.

Over the years he seems to have done all he can to promote his Lord Snooty image. The top hats. The monocle. The vintage Bentleys. All of which won him the nickname ‘Honourable Member for the 18th century’.

Now the show’s tagline promises ‘to show the man behind the myth’. But when I mention this, Jacob and Helena look a bit foxed.

‘It’s just how I am and I don’t want to be anything different,’ says Jacob.

‘It really is, 24-7!’ chips in Helena.

To be fair, he’s been remarkably consistent. In appearance, attitude, politics, his desire to make money, his immaculate manners and his determination to be different.

Contemporaries in Hong Kong, where he worked for several years in the 1990s before setting up his phenomenally successful fund, Somerset Capital Management, remember him turning up at barbecues in jacket, shirt and tie with briefcase.

The last time he can remember wearing swimming trunks – navy blue with a pattern – was on his honeymoon (in the Maldives and on safari) where he hid i   the shade with an enormous historical biography and entertained Helena with Flanders and Swann songs.

Jacob is also relentlessly upbeat – even after losing his seat. ‘Change is always quite exciting. One just carries on.’ He rarely loses his temper and never cries. ‘Why would I?’ he asks. ‘I’ve never   thought that displays of emotion are terribly helpful. I’m not in favour of people wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

‘I think self-control is important. It’s what made Britain a great nation.’

‘Jacob doesn’t really do emotional,’ says Helena.

They first met when she was one and he was nine. ‘He didn’t remember me – outrageous!’

Then again – at a launch party for a campaign for a referendum on the constitution where, as she puts it ‘he may or may not have been sitting in a corner fiddling with his cuff links’.

And, when introduced, launched into an astonishingly long and detailed monologue about her forefather, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford.

‘Had he lived, the Civil War could have gone the other way,’ he says today, still excited.

At the time, she was seeing someone else. But they got together a year later – ‘he always intrigued me’ – despite having few common interests.

‘I like skiing and shooting and hiking and hunting and he just likes to be sitting by the fire in the library with a book,’ she says.

But they did both want a huge family – he wanted 12, her maximum was six.

‘Six was only fair because she does all the work,’ he says. ‘And you’re a hopelessly soft touch! You’re a Leftie Liberal wet wipe when it comes to the children!’ she cries. ‘Am I allowed to say that? Probably not!’

Does she care? Of course not.

But anyway, back to the programme where some things remain sacrosanct – including the contents of Jacob’s wardrobe. Though today he tells me that it contains only suits, black tie, white tie, morning dress and some very smart pyjamas.

So no chinos. No leisure or sportswear – ‘I don’t play sport!’ And absolutely no T-shirts.

Not even to wear in bed?

This time it is Helena who looks appalled. ‘Eugh! I wouldn’t get into it if he did. Who wants to see Jacob in a T-shirt?’

While their ‘Moggumentary’ is unlikely to make Jacob seem any more in touch with the electorate, I suppose that really doesn’t matter anymore.

But it is impossible to spend any time with the Rees-Moggs and not warm to them, so my bet is that the series will be a huge success, with more to come.

‘I did notice a clause about the possibility of a second series,’ he admits. Although perhaps next time, with a little bit more of Helena, Sean and Mary, and a teeny bit less of Jacob.

And – who knows – maybe even a Rees-Mogg Christmas Special – with goose, turkey, even more mashed potato and a lot of port-fuelled games of charades.

Though it won’t be black tie, because, as Jacob points out – it’s lunch, not dinner and that simply wouldn’t be right.