Giving up on Chelsea

THERE is no denying Angela Egan's dogs. She's shut them in the kitchen so that we can chat in peace in the sitting room of her farmworker's cottage. But the moment she goes through to put the kettle on, a small hairy projectile streaks through the gap in the door and starts jumping up and down, demanding affection.

It's William, Angela's West Yorkshire terrier. Out in the kitchen, I'm introduced to more of her four-legged friends: Bernard, a huge Irish Wolfhound/ bearded collie cross, Jojo, a Maltese terrier cross, and Nicky, a Norfolk terrier cross Angela is looking after for her neighbour.

For a moment, the kitchen is filled with bounding, leaping bodies, all excited at the arrival of a stranger. Then Angela manages to hand out some chewy treats, and order is restored. We take advantage of the quiet to retreat into the sitting room again.

"I never wanted children, I just wanted dogs," the 43-year-old, who declares herself 'happily divorced', says, handing me a cup of tea the size of a small wash-basin. She can see the question forming on my lips. "They are not substitutes for children. My dogs are dogs. I treat them with a great deal of respect. I don't try to make them into children or people!"

Fans of reality TV show Chelsea Tales - which has just finished on BBC2 - will have last seen Angela leaving London and the high life to settle in this former farm worker's cottage on the Castle Howard estate.

The series followed the lives of a handful of residents in Britain's "richest and most exclusive location". The show's stars included the likes of 30-year-old Alex, the former army officer turned artist and model; heiress Julia Stephenson; 25-year-old City head-hunter Jez; and 29-year-old socialite Melanie, who lived with her parents in Surrey but aspired to a flat of her own in Chelsea.

Angela was the - how shall I put this? - generously-proportioned one among this glittering circle who was best friends with Anne-Marie, former American model who on the programme was seen battling with terminal cancer.

Despite being given only months to live by doctors, Anne-Marie is now in remission. Her illness partly persuaded Angela to give up her Chelsea Set existence. Her days in the capital were an exhausting mix of a fast-paced, high-profile daytime job as London regional director of the Countryside Alliance, and hectic evenings on the party scene, attending charity fund-raising balls and parties.

It was fun, she admits - it must have been, or she wouldn't have stayed in London for 23 years. "London life can be very empty. But I don't mind people going to parties every night and drinking copious amounts of champagne as long as they are raising money for charity."

But as she watched Anne-Marie's fight with cancer, she began to be aware for the first time of her own mortality.

"You hear of people struggling away until they are 65, and they say when they are 65 they're going to do this and that... and I thought 'I need a life less stressful'. London is a fantastic place when you are young and have got lots of energy and you're successful, but I didn't want to be there at 60. I didn't want to be there at 45!"

As regional director of the Countryside Alliance, she adds, she had been busily protecting everyone else's rural way of life, and yet didn't have one herself. "So I decided I needed a rural life. I do very much believe that it is food for the soul. I really do."

Angela doesn't really think of herself as 'posh', despite the circles she mixed with in London. I admit I've only seen one episode of the programme - the one in which a young society girl tries to get a job as a presenter with Chelsea FC's in-house TV station, I say. She looks blank for a moment, then laughs. "That was Young, Posh and Loaded," she says. "You've been watching the wrong programme!" She pauses for a moment. "Old, working class and broke, that's me."

You've got the posh accent, though, I say, trying to recover some dignity. She looks surprised - "I don't, do I?" - and insists she comes from a perfectly ordinary background. Brought up near Oldham, she went to a state primary school then grammar school, before going off to London to study history at North East London Poly. It was only after that that her life began to move off in directions most of us can only dream about.

She landed a job as an air stewardess with Arab Airlines. "I have never particularly enjoyed travelling," she says. "All my friends were going off with back-packs, and I thought if I have to travel, I'll do it as an air stewardess. I went all over the world, staying in nice hotels. I paid for it, though. I've had malaria."

Back in the UK, she applied for and got a job in Manchester 'working in property' (which meant being an estates manager with Manchester council). She then went back to London, first with Newham and then Westminster councils, doing a similar job, before moving into PR, first with the RSPCA, then the Countryside Alliance.

Her entry into the exclusive circle of the London party set came through charity work. She spent a lot of her spare time using her PR skills to help out at celebrity fund-raising parties. She met Lady Edith Foxwell, who also worked in PR. "And she introduced me to lots of people."

So does she miss the London life? Her cottage - which is split into three, so that at least she has some neighbours - is very remote. Doesn't she find it a bit, well, quiet in North Yorkshire?

She's never been the kind of person to be bored, she says briskly. She works for a Malton estate agent, and does some tour guiding at Castle Howard. And she quickly made friends when she moved here in May.

"It is an incredibly friendly and social place. People entertain themselves around here. There is a group of us and sometimes we go out for dinner, or go to each other's place to have supper, or go to the cinema."

Then, of course, there are her dogs. They can't believe their luck at swapping London for Yorkshire, she says.

And what about her? She had to swap her BMW for a battered old Volvo, her London home for part of a rented farm cottage?

She's never been happier, she says firmly. There is a certain trade-off, and nobody can have it all. "But hopefully, up here, I'm not going to have a heart attack at 50."

As I'm preparing to leave, she begins to talk about her friend Anne-Marie's illness again, and the 'wonderful' support Macmillan nurses gave her when she was ill. "I have never really had much to do with the NHS," she says, "and the Macmillan nurses were amazing! I hope you can mention that!"

So I have. There's no denying Angela Egan.

Updated: 10:33 Tuesday, October 07, 2003