Hi-tech window cleaner and ballroom dancer learn to love new Dales home

When asked how quickly news travels in Grassington, the locals don’t hesitate. “Fast,” is the reply. “Faster than the internet.”

They’re not wrong. By the time Vicky Allan and Andy Johnson had packed up their belongings from their parents’ homes in Surrey and driven up the M1, they were already a few weeks behind the rumours. The young couple were recently crowned winners of the Channel 4 reality show Love Thy Neighbour, but when they finally got their hands on the keys to their prize – a £300,000 cottage in the heart of the village – word had already spread.

According to Grassington’s grapevine, the couple, who during filming had promised the villagers invites to their wedding, had already split-up. A later update claimed they had moved to Australia.

“There have been a lot of stories about what we’ve been up to,” says 23-year-old Vicky, as she wonders whether Wellingtons or black patent boots are best for a photograph. “You can’t avoid rumours up here, so you just have to laugh about it.”

It’s not a bad attitude to have. The show divided the village before the cameras had even arrived. Some were convinced the production company, Studio Lambert, had ulterior motives and would make Grassington a laughing stock. Others had genuine fears the contestants vying for a new life in the white, middle class and conservative idyll, would include either a paedophile or a convicted criminal. Some guessed both.

The result was far less controversial. While there were some cringeworthy moments, like the episode when one of the locals, apparently unable to pronounce the name of city banker Anoop, insisted on calling him something else entirely, but for the most part it was pretty harmless stuff.

With the villagers rejecting a couple of travellers from Dorset and a transvestite called Linda, Vicky and Andy saw off a professional couple from London, who made the mistake of pushing their academic achievements. It turned out rural North Yorkshire didn’t need an astrophysicist or a business consultant with a Phd from Oxford.

What Grassington wanted was Andy, who said he would bring with him from Surrey “the future of window cleaning” and Vicky, who aside from working on a beauty counter in a department store is also a trained Latin and ballroom dancer. Like Grassington itself, the choice of a young, white couple was a conservative one, but as Vicky and Andy begin their new life, a few hundred miles away from their friends and families they’re not about to argue. Prior to a fortnight ago they were both living with their parents – Andy in Frimley and Vicky a few miles down the road in Camberley. Both admit it was an unlovely part of Surrey and while they had plans to get married and were saving for a deposit on their own house, they knew it would be some years before they would be able to get a mortgage.

“When we drove up to Grassington the first time it was incredible,” says 26-year-old Andy. “We both the love the countryside, but where we lived we didn’t get to see it very much. We both come from really close families, so it was always going to be difficult to leave, but the people here are amazing. Where we lived people don’t speak to their neighbours. Grassington’s a totally different atmosphere. Money can’t buy this kind of community and the friendship which goes with it.”

The couple’s journey from the anonymous suburbs to the cobbled streets of Grassington began when Andy spotted an advertisement in a newspaper looking for contestants for a new reality TV show. At the time he was setting up his own window cleaning business and while there were few details, the promise of winning a house was enough to prompt him to send off an application. “I didn’t tell Vicky, partly because I thought it wouldn’t come to anything,” he says. “When I got a call asking us for interview I rushed down to her work to tell her we needed to be in London the next day. It was a bit of an ordeal and when we came out we discovered we’d got a parking ticket. When we then didn’t hear anything for two months I honestly thought it had been a waste of time.”

However, the call did eventually come and last summer, Vicky and Andy found themselves at Sycamore Cottage trying to convince the locals that they deserved the house on a permanent basis. It didn’t go entirely smoothly. Vicky’s first attempt at a lemon drizzle cake failed to impress the village’s baking connoisseurs and then Andy had a run in with the local window cleaner, who told him a rival in the village would not go down well and besides the round was already sewn up. Undaunted he tried knocking on a few doors, but the villagers preferred the traditional chamois and bucket to his talk of water fed poles. He couldn’t even give his services away for free.

“It was emotional,” admits Vicky, who spent much of the final episode in tears. “Until we came to the cottage I didn’t think it was possible to want anything so much. This is our big chance for a new life and it’s not nice to think that people don’t like you or prefer someone else.”

Born in Guatemala, Vicky was adopted by an English family and has always been conscious of fitting in. By the time the first episode of Love Thy Neighbour aired, they already knew they had won, but it didn’t make watching it any easier.

“Andy and I watched it on our own upstairs while the rest of the family were downstairs in the living room,” she says. “It was edited to make it look like we didn’t do very much. They didn’t show the time we stayed up all night making hanging baskets and they didn’t show the friends we made. I guess they wanted to make us look like the underdogs.”

In Grassington, they say you’re not a local until you have three generations in the graveyard and to ensure the newest residents were of suitable stock the couple have faced various inquisitions.

“You’re going to win a house so they want to be sure you don’t have any skeletons in the cupboard,” says Andy, who at one point seemed unsure how best to answer a questionnaire, which included a section on previous dealings with the police.

“Me and Vicky don’t have anything to hide, I’m just not good at filling in forms. We are just a normal couple and I think that’s what people ultimately saw. I got a lot of respect from going up to regulars in the pubs and just talking to them. They like a bit of banter. That’s one thing I am good at.”

The final saw them go head to head with Laura, a single-mother and model, who appeared to have the house in the bag. In fact she lost by three votes – three, says Andy, is his lucky number. For the next 18 months the house technically belongs to the production company, but after a further two years Vicky and Andy will own it outright.

“It means everything to us. It’s a safe place to raise children and that’s all we really want,” says Vicky, who already has plans to turn one of the stone cottage’s three bedrooms into a nursery. “It’s what we have always dreamed of.”

Andy is still hoping to start his own window cleaning business, Vicky is on the lookout for jobs at House of Fraser in nearby Skipton and the couple plan to marry next year. However, before then there’s still a lot to learn about village life.

“You know what,” says Vicky, looking out of the living room window. “I didn’t know ducks could fly until I came up here.”

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