Russell Watson on keeping stuff he doesn’t need: ‘I am a hoarder’

He’s known as ‘The Voice’, but Russell Watson could also lay claim to the less illustrious title of ‘The Hoarder’.

The ‘people’s tenor’, whose first album The Voice came out nearly 25 years ago, finds it tough to part with the “stuff”, as he calls it, that he has amassed throughout his sparkling musical career.

And after moving house three years ago to a big and very beautiful farmhouse in Cheshire, there was even more room for his stuff. But when he was asked to take part in the Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House TV show, in which auctioneer Angus Ashworth puts celebrities’  possessions under the hammer at a real auction, the singer reluctantly agreed to let some of his possessions go.

“Having moved home only a few years ago, we’d collected so much stuff over the years, and stuff that I no longer need or use, that I thought it was a great opportunity to maybe lighten the load,” says Watson, 58.

“I do tend to keep a lot of stuff that I don’t need, so I’ve collected a lot of rubbish over the years – my wife calls it rubbish, I call it stuff.

“I’m a hoarder – I don’t like to get rid of things because certain items to me denote memories from certain times.”

So was it hard for Watson – who’s just started his nationwide Evolution Tour – and his wife Louise to get rid of just a little bit of their “stuff”?

“No!”, he insists.

“For me it was a sort of parting of the goods where my wife said you don’t use that. That can go. That’s been up in the attic for 10 years. It was stuff like that, but even so, I was still reluctant to let go – it might have a use down the line.”

Watson agreed to let 10 items go under Ashworth’s hammer, including a Fender Stratocaster guitar with an estimated value of £600-£900, which Watson had owned for 25 years.

“I hadn’t picked it up in 24 years and just thought maybe it was time the ’Caster went,” he says. “And as I was letting go of it, I had a tear in the corner of my eye, and I was hoping among hope that it didn’t sell.

“I sat listening to the auction, and I could feel myself getting warmer and warmer, uncomfortably, where beads of sweat appear on your forehead, and all of a sudden the reality strikes like lightning: ‘Oh no, my guitar is sold!’.”

The guitar raised £900, and Watson reflects: “Now there’s a little space on my guitar rack where the Fender Stratocaster used to stand. And I thought to myself ‘Why did I sell that?’.”

He also agreed to part with a white silk suit that he wore for the 2002 Classical Brit Awards, where he won two gongs.

Happily for Watson, the suit, which had an estimated value of £200, didn’t sell . “I was thrilled about that,” he says gleefully.

“So that’s going to sit in my wardrobe. But from my perspective, it’s a memory. It’s something I look at and think who on earth advised me that wearing a white suit at an event of that magnitude at the Royal Albert Hall was a good idea?”

The suit was just one item from an extensive wardrobe owned by Watson, who admits he hangs on to clothes that don’t fit him any more, in case they fit again in the future.

“I’ve got stacks of good-quality clothing, going back 25 years, that maybe I’ve worn a few times, and then it’s been put in the wardrobe,” he says.

“I’m like, why do I keep all that stuff, it doesn’t fit any more. But one day it might fit.

“But since I’ve moved to the farm, I’m doing that much running around and fixing fences and digging and God knows what, that I’ve dropped quite a bit of weight. And so all these things that once were tight now look rather splendid, so it’s a jolly good idea I didn’t offload all this useless stuff because now it has a use.

“Which is one of the reasons why I tend to hoard, because I have this feeling that one day I might need that.”

But the down-to-earth northerner (he was born in Salford) adds with a chuckle: “One day I might need that extra toilet brush.”

The most lucrative sale for Watson was an 18-carat gold Ulysse Nardin Swiss watch, gifted to him after a performance. It sold for a whopping £5,100.

Another piece of jewellery that Watson was happy to let go was a white gold ring which he was given as part of a sponsorship deal for a jeweller in Tokyo, Japan. It was sold at the auction for £1,400.

He says: “It’s a beautiful piece of jewellery, but I never wore it. It just wasn’t my thing – it looked like a doorstop  manifesting itself halfway down one of my fingers.”

He says the ring had been “stuck in a box for a long, long time, since about 2004,” and declares: “Oh, I really am a hoarder! I’ve had these things lying around not just a couple of years, I’ve had them for years and years, and decades in some cases.”

It wasn’t just Watson’s ‘stuff’ that was sold – other items included a chair and footstool of Louise’s that went for £42, and a dressage saddle of Louise’s that made £60.

The saddle was one of many that Louise, a keen dressage rider, owns for her horses, which she keeps at the farm along with a menagerie of other animals including four dogs, sheep, goats, horses, alpacas and even a rescued ostrich called Fuzzy.

Watson says: “We fell in love with the farm the moment we drove up the pathway and saw the open countryside and beautiful views.

“Stylistically, this house is very different to the other house we lived in. This house has got lower ceilings, it’s got oak beams, The other place had more of a modern feel, so a lot of the stuff hasn’t quite worked here.”

And all that country air has got to be good for his health – he recovered from two brain tumours in 2006 and 2007. But happily, he says: “My health is good – I always say that with a sense of trepidation. At this moment I feel good, healthy and positive-minded.”

The auction of Watson’s items raised more than £7,000, and he says: “We’re sending some of it to charity, and the rest I’ll spend on stuff I don’t need.”

The fifth series of Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House airs weekly on Really and discovery+ from October 27.