Homes Under the Hammer’s Martin Roberts says crew thought they had ‘found dead body’ hidden while filming
Martin Roberts, the star of property auction series Homes Under the Hammer, has recalled a time his TV crew believed they had discovered a dead body while filming in a sold property.
The incident took place while the crew were filming an episode in Cumbria.
Roberts, 61, told MailOnline that the team had been exploring the recently sold house, when his producer emerged from the upstairs looking “ashen in the face”.
He then informed the crew that there “was a dead body in the bed”.
After “tiptoeing” upstairs and confirming that there was indeed a body under the sheets, they then discovered that, thankfully, the person in question was not dead.
The team soon deduced that “someone forgot their grandad”.
“We went to this one house, which had clearly been lived in until very recently,” he remembered. “Almost like the kettle was still hot kind of thing and we went in and then the director went and had a look around.
“And she came out absolutely ashen in the face. And she said, ‘’There is a dead body! There’s a dead body in the bed.’ And we were like, ‘well, that’s a first, we didn’t see that on the risk assessment’.
He continued: “She said ‘no, no, no. There is a dead body.’ So we all sort of tiptoed into the bedroom and sure enough, there’s this body underneath the sheet and we’re like, ‘we really don’t know how to deal with this’.”
It was, added Roberts, when the body began “snoring” that the crew “nudged it”.
“And then this old man sat bolt upright, no teeth and said, ‘where’s my family?’” he recalled. “The people had left in such a rush that they forgot grandad.
“Grandad was still sleeping in the bed. The family had left. The house had been sold. He’s suddenly faced with film crew from Homes Under.”
The story fortunately came to a happy conclusion, as they learned that the previous occupants had moved nearby, and were able to reunite the man with his family.
Roberts has featured in over 700 episodes of Homes Under the Hammer since the programme’s inception in the early 2000s.
The series sees people purchase run-down properties at auction, and attempt to renovate them in order to make a profit.
Homes Under the Hammer is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
