Where original Changing Rooms cast are now – prison stint after £50K cancer fraud to buying a zoo & surprise new career

CHANGING Rooms was the iconic design show that captured the hearts of the nation in the 90s - and now its reboot is back tonight for a second series. Show legend Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen will host season two alone, with Anna Richardson having quit due to other commitments. The popular TV show sees neighbours take over each other’s homes alongside a professional designer and carry out makeovers - with mixed results.

Back in the 90s it was hosted by Carol Smillie, and featured fan favourites Handy Andy Kane and Linda Barker. Here we take a look at what the original cast are up to now. Former model and fitness instructor Anna Ryder Richardson, now 58, was an interior designer by the time she came to Changing Rooms - and became known for some unique choices. A standout moment was when she framed erotic French undergarments and placed them around one homeowner’s room.

On seeing the results, the contestant screamed and cried: "Why would I want this s**t in my room?! I've got children!”. Anna endured a stint in the jungle during 2007's I'm A Celeb, and in 2008 she fulfilled her lifelong dream of owning a zoo when she purchased Manor House Wildlife Park in Pembrokeshire for £1million. This led to a load of TV series about her experiences looking after animals, including Chaos at the Zoo, Anna's Welsh Zoo and Wild Welsh Zoo.

Her teenage daughters Bibi and Dixie grew up "surrounded by gibbons, rhino and tigers". However, in 2012 she and her husband Colin MacDougall were charged with health and safety violations when a mother and four-year-old son were crushed by a falling tree. MacDougall was fined £110,000 after a three week trial - at a time when the couple had been living in a wooden cabin to save money to complete the rhino enclosure.

Anna has since admitted the "stresses and strains" of running the zoo are what ended her and Colin's 18-year marriage. Anna now presents on BBC Radio Wales, lives in a farmhouse near the park and regularly posts updates from the zoo. Elizabeth Wagstaff was one of the makeover experts on Changing Rooms, but she was handed a one-year prison sentence in 2000 after lying to many of her friends and colleagues about having terminal cancer in order to raise more than £54,000.

The fraudster said she needed the money for medical treatment in America, but used it to buy expensive food and designer clothes. She took £13,000 from her then boyfriend and large amounts from some of her Changing Rooms co-stars and producers, including Linda, Laurence and Anna. Laurence - whose father died from leukaemia - and his wife Jacqueline had felt so sorry for Elizabeth, they even made her godmother to their daughter Hermione.

Elizabeth pleaded guilty to 14 counts of obtaining a money transfer by deception and four of obtaining property by deception. Judge Quentin Campbell told her: "The nature of your deceptions was particularly cruel and unpleasant. There cannot be anyone in this court who has not had a friend or relative who truly does suffer from cancer or had died from that disease.". During his time on Changing Rooms, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen became as well-known for his loud suits as his daring designs and dubbed himself “the Pope of subversion” throughout his time on the show.

Thanks to his sharp tongue, he went on to become a huge celebrity in Asia and Australia as a judge on TV show The Apartment, and then House Rules. He admitted it took a bit of persuading to get him to return to Changing Rooms, telling The Sun: “I’ve got so used to these enormous shows in Asia, in Australia, in America. "In Asia I’ve got 130million viewers and it’s all about my guyliner, and it’s all about my backlighting and it’s a huge crew. I don’t move without 300 people in an entourage.

“Suddenly Changing Rooms is like live and acoustic. It’s literally like going back to having a concert above a pub again. It’s incredibly invigorating, even in my advanced age. I think that’s one of the reasons I said yes.”. Laurence, 57, lives in the Cotswolds with wife Jackie. He has two grown-up daughters and three spaniels. Carol Smillie hosted Changing Rooms from its start until 2003, and won a National TV Award and Bafta nomination, and admitted she was disappointed not to have been cast in the reboot.

She went on to host Wheel of Fortune, but sparked controversy in 2003 when she admitted she cheated on a Mensa test which she took to prove game show hostesses aren't stupid. These days Carol has a very different job officiating weddings, naming ceremonies and funerals after becoming a humanist celebrant a few years ago. Carol - who works under her married name Carol King - married her first couple in 2019.