Queen of crafting, understander of people’s problems and general good egg – no wonder Kirstie Allsopp is so popular, says Faith Eckersall

It’s a freezing Friday morning and a vicious wind is whipping round the entrance at B&Q’s Fleetsbridge store. 

The automatic doors barely have time to close before another swarm of excited customers approaches, iPhones at the ready and brandishing ready-to-be-autographed copies of Kirstie’s Homemade Home.

Unlike the Queen of England, who has a large bodyguard to ensure people don’t crush her, the Queen of Homemade has a couple of PR ladies and is delighted with the merry throng, whose chatter is competing against boppy music, the beep-beep of the phantom floor-cleaner and the occasional gone-off alarm.

Kirstie is here today as a B&Q ambassador because the store is trialling its newest concept; removing the blokey towers of sand, cement and Trade White which can all too often confront you when you arrive at their warehouses, and instead going for a more John Lewis-y look with bright lights, fabulous wallpaper choices and glass pods showing how you could use the company’s products to brighten your bathroom, kitchen or garden.

“Everybody who works for this store wants to find a way to help you love your home,” beams Kirstie. “They’ve got masses of help and advice and products and particularly when times are tough, they want you to walk in your door and feel that your home is a happy, warm, comfortable place to be.”

Then it’s cheers, confetti bombs, a staff sing-along and she’s into the crowd, signing, posing for pictures and dispensing kind words to everyone who approaches her. Despite her briskness on the box, in real life she is a charmer and has time for them all.

B&Q’s PR people feel lucky to have her. She loves working with the chain because they fit with her waste-not and made-do-and-mend ethos and her belief that we can all improve our homes for less money then we think.

She may be very wealthy indeed – 13 years making hit shows like Location Location Location and running her own business since God was a lad have seen to that. But Kirstie’s knack is that despite this she also gives a clear impression of having a firm grip on the harsh financial realities facing ordinary families today.

“People feel the need to utilise all their space now,” she says, indicating the glass pod tricked out like a garden terrace, in which we are conducting our interview. “They have to use all the space they’ve got, particularly in regions like this. In the south east and south west, property prices are so high that every single square foot has to be utilised.”

She explains that practicalities like this are why B&Q has devoted so much space to its new storage section. “We need to store stuff well because we don’t have enough space, it’s expensive to do,” she insists. “No one can afford to have the spare room or dining room full of clobber; those rooms are a luxury now.”

She’s no slouch, either, when it comes to a bit of DIY. “Hanging pictures, tidying things up, sticking things back together,” she says.

This is necessary because, as the mother of two boys and step-mum to two more: “I am constantly fixing things and glueing things; it’s not new projects, just general maintenance,” she says. “My son cannot keep his feet on the floor, he will just go across the room across different pieces of furniture, as though the floor was crocodile infested.”

Then she yawns, apologises profusely, admits she’s been up since 5am because ‘everyone has to go in a different direction today’ and then breaks off the interview to text her partner, Ben, to remind him of something to do with a key.

If it was anyone else, frankly, I’d feel like slapping them but she is so nice she gets away with it.

“I have different coloured ribbons for all my keys,” she says. I am longing to ask about this, ask her for more tips, longing to know how I could reorganise my life to run property companies and be on TV and open DIY stores, and re-vamp furniture, and wear five-inch heels without breaking my ankle and look so fresh-faced with all this fandango going on (there’s no Botox, I looked). But time is against us and Kirstie has to leave.

As we get up to say goodbye she starts talking about her boys again, asking why it is they never listen to what she says; “They won’t wear trousers or a coat and I say they’ll be cold and then say they won’t and then they are and I say I told you so.”

Perhaps Kirstie’s world is not so different from the rest of us, then. Minus the fame, the money and the crazy-busy public appearances, obviously...