Anne Robinson's millions: How TV star amassed a £50m fortune...but vows to ... trends now

As a schoolgirl, she earned her pocket money by gutting chickens at her mum's poultry firm.

But a combination of lucrative TV work and shrewd property investments have left Anne Robinson with a fortune so vast that her main struggle is getting rid of it.

The acid-tongued former Weakest Link presenter, 79, has been forced to 'spread' her £50m fortune among her relatives to keep it out of the hands of HMRC.

'I've given it all away. I don't want the taxman to have it. I've spread it about quite a lot, to the children. They may as well enjoy it now,' the former Weakest Link presenter told Saga magazine.

She claimed to have 'no idea' how much she was worth, but conceded she did not 'want for much'.

At her financial peak, she owned a £5 million apartment in 5th Avenue, Manhattan, and share of a holiday home in the upmarket East Coast Hamptons area of New York State.

In one interview she said: 'A lot of my money is in property. I started investing in the Eighties.

'I've got an apartment on Fifth Avenue [in New York], a share of a house in the Hamptons, there's this house and the place in Gloucestershire and… quite a lot of property, really.'

She bought a converted barn in the Cotswolds 18 years ago but has first added extra land and then bought a neighbouring barn which has been connected by doors on the ground and first floor to her home.

Planning documents revealed she intended the properties to be joined but to be kept separate allowing for the possibility that another family could live next door, or the house could be rented out.

During lockdown she completed her departure from London with the sale of her four-storey villa in Kensington West London which was bought for £3.55 million.

She had lived in the home since 2002 and until 2006 with her ex husband John Penrose, who was her agent and the man behind many of the

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