Jacob Rees-Mogg and family to star in fly-on-the-wall documentary
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family are to star in a fly-on-the-wall documentary, it has been announced.
The five-part reality TV series, “Meet the Rees-Moggs”, will be released by Discovery+ later this year and promises to “lift the lid on the man behind the public image”.
The eccentric former Cabinet secretary, who lost his seat of North East Somerset in the general election, said that the series “may be a bit more Fawlty Towers than Downton Abbey”.
Discovery+ has promised that the show will offer a “never-before-seen look” into the life of Sir Jacob at his home in a 17th-century house in Somerset, where he lives with his wife and six children.
The series will follow the ex-MP through the run up to the election and its aftermath, as his 14-year tenure in the Commons came to an end.
The documentary producers have also said that the series will give viewers an insight into the politician who “divides opinion”, as well as showing what he is like as a husband and father.
Last month, Sir Jacob told The Sun on Sunday that it was “very flattering” to have been approached by the channel.
The GB News presenter was educated at Eton College and then attended Oxford University.
He went on to set up a fund management firm Somerset Capital, and has previously been estimated to be worth £100 million.
The former business secretary said of the production: “Animals, children, an election and a film crew. What could possibly go wrong?
“This everyday story of Somerset folk is fun to film but may be a bit more Fawlty Towers than Downton Abbey.”
Sir Jacob, and his wife Helena de Chair, live at the Grade-II listed Gournay Court in West Harptree in Somerset. The property was used as a military hospital during the First World War.
Their children, Peter Theodore Alphege, Mary Anne Charlotte Emma, Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan, Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam, Alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius and Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher will appear in the programme.
They have been taken care of during their childhood by the family nanny, Veronica Crook, who has taken care of Rees-Moggs since the 1960s.
Sir Jacob once said that he had never changed a nappy, adding: “I’ve made no pretence to be a modern man at all, ever.”
The former Cabinet minister was reportedly followed by a camera crew as he addressed the Popular Conservatism conference on Tuesday.
He told the event that the election had proved that his party was neither popular nor conservative, and told attendees that Tories “must not assume that we just come back automatically”.