Strictly star opts for Life at the Barn - Worthing date

It has been a remarkable turn-around for Strictly Come Dancing’s Flavia Cacace-Mistry and her former actor husband Jimi. Now they are hitting the road to talk honestly about their biggest life-changing adventure yet; their move from city living to a small holding in the countryside, all part of their dream to be self-sustainable. Flavia & Jimi: Our Life At The Barn will be at Worthing’s Pavilion Theatre on October 9.

The couple, who document their new venture on their Instagram account @OurLifeAtTheBarn, will share insights into the journey and the bumps and highs along the way.

“We used to live in Guildford,” Flavia says, “ but we always had that dream of moving away and would always be thinking about it whenever we had the day off. We just wanted to be near the coast and somewhere accessible and maybe have animals but we could just never really pinpoint where. I used to holiday in Cornwall but that felt just a tad too far and so we were looking at all sorts of different places but then we put the dream on hold.

“I stopped touring in 2018 and we thought let's start a new business. I did personal training and Jimi did a culinary arts diploma and we decided to put together an online business where people could do fitness and nutrition and motivation.

“It was already set up and we launched it… two weeks before Covid. Online was very new and at that time nobody was really doing anything like that online but then Covid hit and some people thought ‘Brilliant, you guys have got the right idea’, but the trouble was everybody was putting up fitness stuff for free and we were trying to launch a business. We marched on for about six months but the whole world had turned upside down overnight and it wasn't working for us so really we just thought what is it that we really wanted to do.

“Everything has got to have a silver lining. We’d gone with our heads and it hadn't really worked so we decided now to go with our hearts and we just thought let's move. We thought let's put our house on the market and then 48 hours later we had sold our house. It was getting real and because it was during Covid we were not allowed to go on viewings until we had had an offer. So we started looking. We started looking at east Devon mostly and then this place came up that was a bit further away, south Devon rather than east Devon. But it had paddocks and seven acres and we thought well maybe it's the wild card, perhaps we should have a look. We thought we might as well and I think you just know with houses, don’t you. You just have a feel about them. We came to it as the last viewing of the day and there was just something about the energy and the spirit of the house and the land and the location. We just instantly fell in love with it. That was in 2020 and we moved in January 2021.”

The perfect move. They have got animals are and are hoping to get more. They've got holiday cottages that they rent out: “We are 100 per cent happier. We were constantly searching for something and we have found it now. We've got so many, many projects to do. Before we were always thinking what the next project was going to be but now we've got a list as long as your arm and we are having to get people to come on board to help us and we've got the holiday cottages for hire as well which is great. We feel fulfilled. Fulfilled is definitely the word. We're lacking for nothing… apart from maybe the odd day off!”