IDEAL HOMES

MARGI CLARKE ACTRESS AND TV PRESENTER Lives with her family in a four-bedroom house in Liverpool

LOCATION: On Loch Awe, near Oban, in Celtic Scotland. I have always felt a strong connection to the Celts. They were fantastic designers, had a great love of beauty and were skilful with language.

ESSENTIAL AMENITIES: Mountains, babbling brooks, mountain ash and oak, green grass and magic mushrooms.

CHARACTER AND CONSTRUCTION: Mainly Georgian: I have delusions of grandeur, even though I was raised in a council house. The two-storey house would be built of quartz; the crystal in the stone would concentrate the living energies in the house. The roof would be flat with a big fat chimney and a parapet.

HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS: Charles Rennie Mackintosh would have lived there and left fantastic mirrors and lovely chairs that Goldilocks could have sat on.

BEDROOMS: Four. One for me and my boyfriend, Jamie Reid, one for our daughter, Rowanbud, one for my son, Laurence, and one for the ghost of Rennie Mackintosh.

BATHROOMS: Two, with fluffy white towels and loads of perfume.

RECEPTION ROOMS: A big living room with a chandelier, in homage to my grandmother who had one in her council house. There would be no TV: I don't like watching television; I just like being on it. I'd have a music room with a piano for me to bash on and African percussion instruments, so if the phones went down you'd be able to get through on the drums.

DECORATIVE STYLE: New Age. There would be fossils, a Foucault's pendulum and a crystal ball so I could check on events in the world. The walls would be hung with silkscreen prints by Jamie, who is a designer. I'd have massive couches which Rowanbud, who is two and a half, could trampoline on.

LUXURIES: Fax machines, telephones and computers linked to Cellnet.

OUTBUILDINGS: I'm an amateur potter so I'd have a pottery shed with a kiln, a wheel and a machine to prepare the clay. A stable: I don't ride, I just love horses. I once had my picture taken with a blonde horse and you couldn't tell who was who.

VIEW FROM THE WINDOWS: Across to one of the tiny islands in Loch Awe.

SIZE OF GARDEN: Big, and stuffed with foxgloves, which I love.

NEIGHBOURS: Only on the telly that I haven't got!

MOTTO OVER THE DOOR: As Jamie and Rowanbud are MacGregors, "Clan MacGregor: royal is our race''.

WHAT IT WOULD COST: According to Julian King, director of Link-Up Proper- ties Nationwide, a Georgian house would be hard to find in that area of Scotland. For between £250,000 and £275,000 Margi Clarke could build herself a pseudo-Georgian property in brick. Julian King has never heard of a house constructed of quartz, but thinks the cost would be "astronomical''.