27/03/2014 The One Show

Hello and welcome to The One Show with Alex Jones. And Matt Baker. To

my's guest loves nothing more than to spring surprises on unsuspecting

members of the public. But it was more a case of shock and surprise

when the tables were turned on her recently. Annabel, will you marry

me? CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

No. This isn't Surprise Surprise. I'm at Ant, that Dec!

It is, of course, Holly Willoughby. Hello. So that was... The worst day

of my life. They're so amazing. I didn't suspect for a second that

that was Ant. On the show, I'm thinking about the surprise at the

end, the big proposal. I always say, what happens if she says no? But you

never think that's going to happen and it happened and I felt sick! I

was just so relieved that it was them. So it was actually better?

Yes, and then you start thinking, you naughty boys! What were you

going to tell the woman? I just remember thinking I wanted to get

her off the set because all the audience stood up and they were

leaning over and watching and getting closer to the action and I

thought I had to separate them. I kept telling the gallery to get them

off set and they said, "stay there!" . It was horrific. We've

just seen your surprised face. You always do this! But tonight we want

to see yours as well. If you've surprised a loved one and managed to

capture the moment on camera, send us your pictures and tell us what

the event was. Britain's housing shortage is so serious that it

estimated around 240,000 homes need to be built every year for the next

20 years to solve it. Just this month George Osborne announced plans

for a new garden city in Kent which includes 15,000 new homes. But what

do locals think about getting so many new neighbours?

Welcome to Ebbsfleet in Kent. It has a state of railway station with

high-speed links into into London taking just 17 minutes. And it's

also got this slightly less state football ground. But what what else?

I'm going to find out. Ebbsfleet is going to be Britain's first garden

city in almost 100 years. Can we go and have a look at the Ebbsfleet

town centre as it is now? There isn't a town centre. There is no

town centre. Ebbsfleet is literally at the moment the international

station. Garden cities were seen as the answer to inner-city squalor at

the end of the 19th century. Self-contained cities with their own

industries and loads of green space - the Purbeck mix. Letchworth and

Welwyn Garden City were built on these principles. And it is here

that the government plans to spend ?200 million turning this disused

quarry and surrounding marshland into a garden city. There has

already been a development project going on here to build this but this

news makes it much bigger. The current developers bought the land

in 2001 and have so far invested ?150 million. What changes? As a

result of the announcement, we would get a much more flexible planning

system. We've got planning permission that was granted a long

time ago for a lot of mixed use and office development. For the

remainder of the quarry, we've got the potential, with some investment

from government, to accelerate the pace of development. The government

is setting up a special corporation with the power to grant planning

permission, borrow money and build. Whenever I talk to my passengers

about this, in the first sentence, the word infrastructure comes up.

The first garden city, Letchworth, was pioneered by this man whose

vision was to combine the best bits of town and country. But to run a

proper garden city, you have to stick to his social principles. What

is the danger of Ebbsfleet, when you're building 15,000 houses? If it

isn't planned properly, what could we be left with? If it isn't planned

properly, we could just be left with housing without any of the other

infrastructure benefits - homes, jobs, a real sense of community.

It's hoped that Ebbsfleet will help to solve the current housing

shortage. We're in a really desperate housing crisis. We need

240,000 new homes each year but we are building less than half. What do

the locals think? Strictly speaking, there aren't any.

Ebbsfleet isn't a place, remember. But there are couple of towns

nearby. I do believe that once the garden city is built they will swarm

into the area because they struggle at the moment to be able to afford

London prices. For us, it is very good news. 15,000 new homes, 15,000

families, construction workers - very good news for us. The football

team can't believe it's luck. It changed its name to Ebbsfleet United

when the Eurostar came in 2007 and now there's this news. It's suddenly

put Ebbsfleet on the map and if we can piggyback on that, so much the

better. In truth, who would have heard of Ebbsfleet before this

announcement? Well, we are now joined by Andrew

Bulmer from the Royal Institue of Chartered Surveyors. We heard

yesterday from the Treasury that we are on the verge of a housing

bubble. What does this mean? That's interesting. Bobble is a great word

but what does a bubble mean? It means different things to different

people. It isn't really a very helpful term. Our members around the

country are telling us quite mixed messages. Overall the market is

strong and overall prices are going up but I do get into trouble when I

go around the country and meet by members and they say, " we're always

reporting house prices rocket up but I'm not seeing it". Even in my

hometown of Nottingham you have an area like West Bradford which is

very strong. -- Westbridge food. Prices are increasing quite rapidly

in some areas but what is causing that and what are the dangers? It is

the same old thing of supply and demand. If you have more buyers than

supply, prices go up. The whole thing about this is supply. 15,000

units in Ebbsfleet - great. There are some who have been slightly rude

about it and called it more of a village than a city. But we need far

more than that. 240,000 units a year is a target that we're miles away

from at the moment. The builders are building more but they're

struggling. If you were in your early 20s now and keen to get a

place of your own, would you do it right now? I'm not going to tell a

20-year-old what to do but if I was 20 and it was right to buy for me at

that time in my life... When you buy a home, you're not buying an

investment. It's a really important thing. Prices are generally going up

and people do look at them as an investment but it is a home first

and if it is right to you at that time, with the market the way it is

at the moment, I would buy. If there were any alarm bells ringing, what

would you be listening out for? You'd see it coming. It would be a

catastrophic change to the economy or the liquidity of the banks and

mortgage lending. At the moment, there's nothing like that on the

horizon that would stop me from buying personally. Thank you,

Andrew. Family businesses in the UK employ

over 9 million people. Larry Lamb has been to meet one family firm who

are proud to have been in the business of funeral directing for

over 200 years. For eight generations, the Leverton

family has been burying people. And old-fashioned funeral cortege. It's

still a site that stops us all in our tracks. I think most people are

very impressed and you see a lot of people. In. Maybe if they're wearing

a hat, they will usually take it off, hold their collar, cross

themselves. I think it is a moment where most people perhaps do reflect

on their own mortality. Leverton's is one of the oldest and most

prestigious undertaking firms in the country. The funerals they've

directed range from one of doctor Crippen's murder victims to Baroness

Thatcher. There's only one chance to do a funeral and it has to be right

every time for every family and they must have what they want. In 1997,

they directed the funeral of Diana, Princess of. I flew over to Paris to

bring her back to the UK. It was very demanding and I was conscious

of a lot of emotions that were being manifest as we went about our task.

We were right in the eye of the storm. We had 27 other funerals

already arranged that week and we looked after all the families

equally well. Do you ever get nervous? Yes, very. This is our

oldest ledger from October 1895. Total cost of the first funeral was

five guineas. Moving on to April 1941, during the air raids. Four

people killed in one block of flats that was demolished. Between them,

Keith and Clive have notched up two years short of a century in

undertaking. They are custodians of a family business that started in

1789. It started with John Leverton, my great, great, great

grandfather. He came up to London in the 18th-century to make his

fortune. Part of his job for the community would have been to make

the coffins and he would also have undertaken to do various aspects of

work. Gradually, during the 19th-century, it became more of an

industry, principally because Queen Victoria's morning for Prince Albert

made funerals more fashionable and when graveyards became to fall,

funerals had to travel to the place of burial. -- became too full. The

carpentry became less and less important and the company could do

more and more of the funerals. Clive's daughter Pippa is the

youngest member of the family to have joined the firm. I think some

people are very surprised to come across a female funeral director.

Women have always been involved in the care and love of people, whether

that's from newborn babies, delivering babies, looking after the

sick, and that care continues right through to the end of life care that

women have always provided. It is a profession that some might regard as

ghoulish but it's a job that runs in this family's blood. I was 12 when I

spoke to the careers master at school. Those who knew, at the age

of 12, wanted to be engineers or footballers or something quite

high-flown and I said I wanted to be a funeral director like my dad.

Paper, her cousin Andrew and his sons, the ninth generation of

Levertons, visit the family gravestone. A lot of people have

asked me why I do my job. It's the worst time in a family's life. You

look at them all through the process and on the day of the funeral, they

come and find you on this terrible, terrible day, perhaps crying their

eyes out and threw their arms around you and say thank you. What could be

more humbling than that? The horse drawn hearse. Now that

I've seen that, I think I'm settled. That's quite morbid. It is an

important thing to think about. Yes, and I think we have a bit of a

rubbish relationship with death and sometimes it's better to talk about

it and know what you want. You've got enough stress in the family

around that time anyway. Now, a little gentle reminder. It's

Mother's Day this Sunday, so no excuses, everybody! What if you've

treated your mum to a slap up lunch, chocolates, flowers and whatever

else her heart desires? You can cuddle up with her for a special

Mother's Day edition of Surprise Surprise. You are probably wondering

what Boyzone are doing in this car park. We are here to surprise a mum

in a million with a Mother's Day gift she won't forget. She thinks

she's shooting a documentary but she doesn't realise four lads from

Dublin are about to storm her radio show. Good morning. I'm with you for

the next half an hour. We're going in. Any chance of playing a Boyzone

record? How are you? What are you doing here? !

Now, Mother's Day must be a dream for you and you must be inundated

with people. It's one of those special shows anyway and then you

throw into the mix that it's Mother's Day and then you got the

beautiful stories that come with it. It couldn't be more perfect. Apart

from Boyzone, what else will be happening? Lots of lovely stories.

There's a surprise for a mum who, through her own experience of having

a premature baby, you just realise that you give birth to your child

and it's whisked away and the one thing she was able to do was to

breast-feed the baby because it was in an incubator. You can't put a

baby grow on. -- was dressed the baby. She made this incredible baby

grow so that the tubes could go in it gave her some control back as a

mum. Of course, Surprise Surprise wouldn't be the same without a

reunion. We have a very good one. A grandmother is reunited with her

twin boys. She hasn't seen them for 50 years. Do you hold it together?

Not always! I always say that if I wasn't doing it I would be sat at

times snivelling because it's real life and real stories are always the

things that get me. I can't apologise for that! When I'm not

watching Matt's programme... I watch it and I'm in pieces. You do a great

job. What's the best surprise you can think of? In series one, there

was a couple, and their wedding video went missing. Lo and behold,

30 years later, the guy goes to a car-boot sale. His hobby was to buy

old pseudonym R boxes, and he looked in there and he found his wedding

video and he thought, one day I should reunite them with the owner.

He said if surprise surprise ever came back, that is what he would do,

and we reunited it with them. You can see that Mother's Day addition

at 7pm on ITV. Jacqueline Wilson, JK Rowling and Holly and her sister

have all written children's books that have topped the bestseller

list. Here is Ruth Goodman with the tale of a 19th-century author who

has been engaging children's imaginations for generations.

In this house lived a remarkable girl whose imagination, literary

flair and sense of adventure would lead her to become one of the most

celebrated children's authors of her day. Edith, E Nesbit, as she was

best known, is credited with writing the very first adventure books for

children in the early 19 hundredths, books such as five children and it,

the story of the treasure seekers and the Railway children. They have

enthralled generations of readers. Despite selling millions of books,

her path to literary success was not easy. After age choice childhood and

a dysfunctional marriage and ever present money worries, she did not

publish her first children's book until she was 41. Were it not for a

few teenage years here at Houston Hall, she might never have found the

inspiration to become a writer. Born in 1858, Edith was the youngest of

six siblings. She was only four when her father tragically died, and

shortly afterwards her elder sister Mary contracted TB. The family spent

the next four years in France, trying unsuccessfully to find a cure

for her. After Mary's death in 1871, the family returned to England

and eventually settled in Kent. This came at a very sad point in her

life. She had had these awful boarding schools where she had been

lonely, never settled, always moving. Suddenly she had this

wonderful house and a room of her own where she could look out.

Edith's poem, recalls happy times. There's a garden away from the noise

of smoke and cities where the hours pass, and lovely leisure blossoms

every day. Brenda is the present bash Makro Brendan is the present

owner. We believe this was her room as a child, her bedroom. At the

back, this would have been where most of the shrubs she talks about

in her writings were. So it is probable that her desk may have been

here and she would have been looking out over this window. The death of

her father and sister weighed heavily on her, and her grief was

profoundly expressed in her later work. In her stories, there is

always this idea that your true dream should be a complete family.

We almost ending of the Railway children - my daddy, my daddy. After

turbulent childhood years, her time Halstead Hall at may have inspired

her to put pen to paper, but it would take more turmoil in later

life to driver writing forwards. At 22, she moved to London and married

Hubert Bland, a failed bank clerk with literary pretensions. He

contributed little to the family finances in the early years of their

marriage, and despite having three children together, he was also a

notorious womaniser. EDF turned to her writing for comfort and began to

sell short children's stories to London magazines. -- Edith. She

turned what had been a useful pass time into a steady source of income.

She eventually published her first children's book in 1899, based upon

a family of adventurous children. Her vivid memories of being a child

meant she could give her characters individual voices, expressing

genuine emotion, something that had rarely been seen in children's

literature before. Many of her characters were based on people she

knew. There is an Oswald in her life, a friend, that she would have

faced Oswald on, and the uncle next door might have been Hubert. The

book was a success and E Nesbit's path to literary stardom was

secured. Her adult life may have been fraught but for her and many of

her readers, her greatest source of comfort was in her past, here

Halstead Hall at. You and your sister have written the

third instalment of school for stars, which I would love if I was a

little girl. For those that have not read it! It is really about

friendship. There are two Twin sisters and they go to the school

for stars and meet their best friend, Pepper. It is really just

their life adventures in what they get up to whilst they are there. So

they are at stage school. Is it based on anyone in particular? When

you are writing, you think of stories from your school life.

Neither of us went to stage school, but we imagined what it might have

been like. There is a Molly in it, which sounds a bit like you. Maria

is journalistic and bright and Molly is a show off. My sister is the

bright one! Obviously the aim is for them to be successful and famous.

Thinking about your own children and with another one on the way, is it

something you will be encouraging them to do? They can do whatever

they want. The nice thing about the book is that the girls are genuinely

talented at what they are doing and they are going through the process

and working hard to get there. That is nice to set right from the start.

The dedication and hard work but it takes. And the good girls always win

out, so it is a good message. You have a fourth instalment on the way,

but would you branch out into adult books. Not adult! 50 shades of

grey? I am not planning that at the moment, but as long as the story

keeps going we will see where we take it. I will let you know how I

get on with the adult books. Well, we have heard about the girls hoping

to be stars, but Ewan Thomas has been to a school where the boys are

learning to be men. Dads and adds, it has a good ring to

it but not all boys have the benefit of a live at home dad. In the UK

there are 1.9 million single parent families, and 8% are single fathers,

meaning the majority are single mums. According to the Princes

trust, having a positive male role model in children's lives can make

them happier and more confident, which is why this high school in

Essex have set up this project with the aim to give the boys a chance to

put down their pencils and interact with positive role models and ask

them some man's staff. Dan Chaplin is the teacher behind it, and in

this lesson they will discuss the important attributes that a man

needs to succeed. They have strength. Bravery. How important do

you think this is? Have you learnt a lot from this lesson? It is very

important. Some do not have a male role model so they learn what it is

to be a man from Mr Chaplin and the other teachers. What exactly is this

man they? We help them to get rid of some of their fears about what it is

like to be a man. I have lived by good principles and I want to feed

some into them, maybe bring back some old-fashioned values, but still

helping them live in a modern world. Next, wiring a plug, not only to

help them practically but also a lesson in recycling. What is

important about learning this? When you are older, instead of buying new

things, you can learn how to sort out things yourself. Do you have the

ingredients to become a good man? I certainly have the qualities of a

hand someone as well. Being a man is not all about wiring a plug but the

shared success of doing this in a male environment is what it is all

about. It is not only the men's supporting the scheme. Female

teachers think it is great, too. It is definitely important. At home, my

son and my husband go off fishing and to football and they enjoy it.

It is important that we are not just an exam factory but a place where

they become well rounded young adults that go out into the world

with a focus and knowing what they are doing. Not only do they get

stuck in with DIY, but they get to cook, too. And to finish off, a

round of golf. Why is golf important for these young men? It teaches them

discipline, manners and how to behave on the course. And it teaches

them a whole lot of patients. I think it works better with that.

Let's face it, we could all use positive role models, male or

female. The lads have loved today, and I would like to think I showed

them a thing or two. That is what he thinks! Earlier, we

asked for pictures if you had surprised a family member. We have

had loads of brilliant ones. She is being surprised by her mother's

singing. It could possibly be wind. This is Natalie's daughter,

surprised by the presence on Christmas Day. That is always a

wonderful moment. This is Mary being surprised on her 80th birthday.

Because she has a posh new handbag. Just what she wanted. I have waited

80 years for this! Emma was surprised when her boyfriend

proposed to her on her 21st birthday. That was what was meant to

happen when ant and deck turned up. Tina's mum was surprised when she

had her 60th birthday party. I am scared of surprise birthday parties.

That is all for this evening. Thank you to Holly. And the book is out

now. Tomorrow, Chris and I are joined by Alan Davies. Good night.