US contestant wins Scotland's Home of the Year contest.
MAJOR WINNER US contestant wins Scotland's Home of the Year contest.
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
AN American who brought 'Californian cool' to the wilds of Scotland has won a prestigious BBC TV property award.
US-born Jessica Zanoni and her artist hubby Chris Labrooy have scooped this year's Scotland's Home of the Year title.
Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter
Sign up
5
essica Zanoni and her artist hubby Chris Labrooy are this year's winners.
5
Style like this saw them pip their rivals to the title.
5
TV judges Banjo Beale, Anna Campbell-Jones and Danny Campbell hand over the award to the happy couple.
5
The couple's luxury bath helped them win the top accolade.
The couple, who live with their son Chase, 18 and dogs Enzo and Dino came out on top after building contemporary Hilltop House near Pitmedden, Aberdeenshire, beating five other finalists to the gong.
Jessica, 39, said: 'It has been such a lovely experience all around, and to win it has been fantastic.
'After watching the shows and getting to see our competition in detail, it really must have been a hard decision to make.'
Chris, 45 adds: 'It's great to win. The house is a reflection of our tastes and personalities and we are proud of what we have created.'
The couple, who run their own art business, built their property on the footprint of the surrounding farm steading, filling it with colourful statement pieces from bright yellow sofas to a pastel pink bathroom.
And their efforts paid off as it left the show's trio of judges impressed by their 'charismatic' choices.
Interior designer, Anna Campbell said: 'This home managed to feel perfect in every way whilst still feeling like a place where real people live.
'I particularly loved the way their art was reflected in their choices of colour and furniture managing to create the perfect balance between playfulness and sophistication.'
Fellow designer Banjo Beale added: 'It's an artful sanctuary - every corner tells a story, and it's quiet and charismatic all at once.'
While architect Danny Campbell stated: 'This was a home that manages to be both deeply personal and architecturally ambitious.
'There's a clarity of vision that's rare - every corner feels considered, every material honest, every space deliberate and thought through.
'It felt like the building was completely in tune with the people who lived there, which is especially impressive for a conversion.'
The eighth series of Scotland's Home of the Year will begin filming from June. For more information on how to enter, please head to bbc.co.uk/shoty for full terms and conditions.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
2 hours ago
- New Statesman
It-girl literary heroines are all cannibals now
What has happened to the literary woman? She used to slouch listlessly towards Bethlehem. Now she is eating people. Chelsea G. Summers' 2020 novel A Certain Hunger follows a food writer who is in prison for murdering, cooking and eating several sex partners. In Ainslie Hogarth's 2022 novel Motherthing, a woman deals with the Freudian fallout of her mother-in-law's death by cooking a personal enemy. In Monika Kim's 2024 thriller The Eyes Are the Best Part, a Korean-American protagonist gets her own back on white men who fetishise Asian women, by stockpiling and eating their eyeballs. This year's Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito reads like a gory take on Agnes Grey and has its central governess joke about eating the children under her care. There is more. Lucy Rose's bestseller The Lamb, published earlier in 2025, is a misery lit-adjacent tale of childhood abuse with a twist: the young protagonist must come to terms with her mother's taste for lost hikers. Catherine Dang's What Hunger, out later this year, promises to '[follow] the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants… as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood.' This violent power comes, as the reader may guess, with 'an insatiable hunger for raw meat.' And in the Young Adult sphere there is Maika and Maritza Moulite's 2025 novel The Summer I Ate the Rich, which uses its Haitian-American zombie protagonist to '[scrutinise] the socioeconomic and racial inequity that is the foundation of our society.' Inequity is the largest constant in this emerging genre. Almost every female literary cannibal resorts to cooking and eating people because of trauma in her past, and in each case the trauma is indexed to a larger political concern. Lucy Rose 'explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts.' One of the women in The Lamb has her first brush with cannibalism after she is denied an abortion. 'My body was a stranger,' she says, 'but my father wanted me to bring the baby to term… I gobbled him up in one bite.' The protagonist of A Certain Hunger has no socio-political 'hook' and little discernible trauma. Instead she is off at us from the first page about the 'class privilege' emanating from the hotel bars where she finds her prey, the nature of femaleness ('as abjectly capitalist as a Big Mac') and for-profit prisons, which have been taken over by 'agribusiness.' 'I'm white and educated,' she writes from jail, 'and these privileges get you as far in the incarcerated world as they do in this one.' The Eyes Are The Best Part is about the red-hot intersection of race and hereditary trauma. 'Generational trauma' is a 2020s buzzword. Kim gives us long family dinners, beleaguered parents and stories of Japanese occupation; we even get our customary helping of over-mystified etymology. ('In Korean, the word for 'fortune' is palja,' goes one chapter opening, going on to illustrate a concept of 'fortune' basically the same as our own). Cannibalism is a welcome intrusion. But when our heroine gets down to business we realise her bloodthirsty anger is just another bit of the literary furniture, a convenient 'trope' around which to hang a novel. There is 'rage' and then there is 'female rage' – one of the latest, and also most condescending, literary buzzwords. Penguin Random House offers an online listicle of books that 'explore the depths of female rage, offering catharsis and understanding in a disturbing world.' Their female characters lash out at colonialism and domestic abuse and the expectations of motherhood; Kim's protagonist Ji-won is only driven to pluck out white men's eyeballs because of constant background racism. We get the picture: women are only allowed their explosive excesses of sex and violence if they have some outside justification to feel particularly angry. Nobody placed the same expectation on Sade, who went about spanking and pontificating as he liked. There are few female fetishists in literature; the entirety of A Certain Hunger, with its qualifications and get-out clauses, proves how difficult it is to murder and eat for the joy of it. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe All of this rage and killing and hunger is difficult to square with the mechanics of the literary world. Female readers have spent years subjected to the waverings of Sally Rooney-style heroines, who are never able to formulate a proportional response to the S&M sex they suffer at the hands of indifferent men. The best answer we have had is in Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the Ur-text of what is now called 'messy girl literature': a young woman, scarred by the death of a parent, simply takes a lot of sleeping pills and watches passively as her life spirals out of control. So we get cannibalism, which is symbolically ambiguous enough to work as an acceptable stand-in for all other literary sensuality. Some of the most enthusiastic sex writing of our time is actually about eating people. 'I'm whimpering like a dog,' says Monika Kim's eyeball-eating heroine, as she chews on cartilage. 'But I can't help it… I am in ecstasy.' The food writer in A Certain Hunger relishes 'the satisfying heft of the ice pick in my hand, the balletic arc of my arm, the cinematic spurt of blood.' When we get to our final, sensual standoff, we are allowed to forget all the rest of it. Perhaps the real point of our new bloodthirsty heroine is that she isn't plugged in at all. [See more: Sally Rooney is the conscience of a generation] Related
Scotsman
2 hours ago
- Scotsman
Where is Amanda Knox now? True story behind Disney+ show
Disney Plus' limited series about Amanda Knox has started today 📺 Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is released weekly on Disney Plus. It is based on the true story of her wrongful conviction for the murder of Meredith Kircher. The case was one of the most high-profile of the 2000s. One of the most notorious murders of the early 2000s is the subject of a new series on Disney Plus. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is based on the true-story of the killing of Meredith Kircher. The British university student was on exchange in Italy when she was murdered. Her roommate, Amanda Knox, was wrongfully convicted and locked up by the Italian authorities. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Disney Plus describes the show as being 'inspired' by the true-story of the killing and Amanda's journey to set herself free. But what happened to Amanda Knox after she left prison? Here's all you need to know: When is The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox out on Disney Plus? Grace Van Patten in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox | Disney Plus The limited series made its premiere on Disney Plus today (August 20) with two-episodes. The rest of the show will then be released weekly on the streaming platform on Wednesdays. Episodes will be available from 8am British time - which is 9am in Europe. For American audiences it releases at 3am ET/ 12am PT on Wednesdays. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox will have eight episodes in total. It is scheduled to finish on October 1. Who is in the cast of the Disney Plus show? Grace Van Patten and Giuseppe de Domenico in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox | Disney/Andrea Miconi The series stars Grace Van Patten, Sharon Horgan, John Hoogenakker, Francesco Acquaroli, Giuseppe De Domenico and Roberta Mattei. Grace Van Patten plays Amanda Knox, while Sharon Horgan is Edda Mellas. John Hoogenakker plays Curt Knox and Francesco Acquaroli isItalian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Giuseppe De Domenico plays Amanda's co-accused Raffaele Sollecito, while Roberta Mattei is Monica Napoleoni. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Grace Van Patten is known for appearing in shows like s Nine Perfect Strangers and Tell Me Lies. Viewers may recognise Sharon Horgan from the likes of Catastrophe and Apple TV's Bad Sisters. Where is Amanda Knox now? Following the murder of Meredith Kercher in November 2007, her roommate Amanda Knox was arrested alongside her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. They were held in prison until standing trial in early 2009. After being convicted, Amanda was sentenced to 26 years in jail. In the years after, the convictions came under much scrutiny and a second-level trial in 2011 found Knox and Sollecito not guilty. The duo were eventually exonerated for murder by the Italian supreme court in 2015. Upon her return to America after her time in prison in Italy, Knox went back home to Seattle and continued her studies at the University of Washington. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the years since her exoneration, she wrote a memoir about her case and has devoted herself to writing and activism for the wrongfully accused. She hosted The Scarlet Letter Reports on Facebook Watch, a series which examined the "gendered nature of public shaming". Knox worked for a time as a reviewer and journalist for what then was West Seattle Herald. She is married and had her second child in 2023. She made a cameo appearance as herself in the first-season finale of romantic comedy TV series Laid in 2024. Knox has also been the subject of a Netflix documentary in 2016 called Amanda Knox.
Scottish Sun
2 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Love Island winner Toni reveals she's leaving Cach in the UK to return to US – as fans predict couple will SPLIT
The winners revealed what they plan on splashing the £50k on TIME APART Love Island winner Toni reveals she's leaving Cach in the UK to return to US – as fans predict couple will SPLIT Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) LOVE Island winner Toni Laites has revealed she's leaving Cach Mercer as she returns to the US. The couple won over the hearts of the nation after they found their way back to each other following a messy split in the villa. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 Love Island's Toni Laites has revealed she's leaving Cach in the UK to return to the US Credit: Instagram 3 Toni said her Visa to stay in the UK has come to an end Credit: Shutterstock Editorial Toni had her head turned by Harrison but he then dumped her for Casa Amor's Lauren before quitting the show. Toni then rekindled her romance with Cach before going on to win the series and scooping a prize fund of £50k. The pair have been attached at the hip since leaving the villa but Toni has now revealed that she's leaving the UK very soon. She admitted that her Visa has come to an end and she'll be heading home to Los Vegas. A fan asked during a Q&A if she will be staying in the UK, to which Toni replied: "They're not letting me. I'll be in Las Vegas for a week, I don't want to be there at all." She then turned to Cach and affectionately said: "I'm going to miss this." They were joined by co-star Jamie Rhodes, who asked if Cach had been to Vegas yet. Cach replied: "Toni hasn't left my side since coming out of the villa," as the US star echoed: "Cach hasn't left my side since we've left the villa." But fans fear the couple won't last the distance as they prepare to be separated. One wrote: "In six months time we are going to see statements of them separating...," while a second added: "Facts." Watch as Love Island winner Toni takes final swipe at villa ex Harrison after winning £50k SPLASHING OUT Ahead of their show victory, Toni and Cach spoke to former Islanders and Aftersun hosts Indiyah Polack and Amy Hart. When asked what they'd spend the £50k on, Cash replied: 'I've already got what I want, money's just a bonus.' And Toni shared exciting holiday plans, adding: 'I'll take my mum on vacation, as well. After ours, of course…' After weeks of coupling up, dumpings, texts and triangles, the series came to a close with a battle between Toni & Cach, Shakira Khan & Harry Cooksley, Angel Swift & Ty Isherwood and Yasmin Pettet & Jamie Rhodes. However, it was the show's first American bombshell Toni and dancer Cach who got the most votes from fans after their rollercoaster journey on the show. Thrilled fans praised the result, with one saying: "I actually feel like I've won the World Cup. This is actually everything to me!" Just a few weeks ago, Toni split from Cach to rekindle with her old flame Harrison - not knowing he had been intimate with Casa Amor's Lauren. After just one day, he U-turned yet again - and ended up leaving the villa when Lauren was voted out. Despite Cach breaking down in tears over the embarrassment of his public split from Toni, he forgave her. They started up their relationship once again and on their final night in the villa said "I love you". Before his arrival in the villa, Cach appeared on Are You The One? UK, which aired back in 2022 on MTV. He was 20 years old at the time and competed under his full name, Cacharel.
