The key to presenting success? Making the most important moments matter. Jean Johansson talks navigating life’s knocks and finally rapping on the right doors

Interview by Cheryl Caira

The ability to make anyone you meet feel reassured, listened to and able to navigate the biggest decisions is one of life’s superpowers. This is where Jean Johansson – presenter, Glaswegian and gleeful Celebrity Mastermind winner – finds her raison d’être.

Easy, breezy but knowledgeable with it, Johansson has been witness to tears, transformation and every shade of stunned on screen. Whether that’s someone discovering they’ve inherited a multimillion-pound property or taking the dilapidated bones of a building and turning into a dream home.

The legal intricacies of being an unexpected heir and the soul-searching choices that come with it are the issues on the table in Johansson’s latest property undertaking, Key to a Fortune. No spoilers ahead, but the UK-wide windfalls span an 18th-century farmhouse in the rolling countryside, an estate that ended up exceeding £900,000, and the renovation of a £2 million inherited castle.

With millions of pounds’ worth of vacant homes sitting empty in the UK – quietly waiting to be reunited with an unsuspecting relation – it’s an emotional watch. While the experts busy themselves trying to solve the riddle of an heir’s whereabouts, there’s a contemplation of the people that have passed away with no will or direct next of kin, potential generational reunions, and the question of whether they really want to carry on the family legacy.

The love of the job is obvious when seeing Johansson hand over a key to the rightful beneficiary or revealing that a property has been valued at well over what was anticipated. “It’s the best bit about it, being able to share those big, big moments,” she says. “With Key to a Fortune, it’s really normal, everyday people who didn’t quite know what they’d inherited, and it was a real privilege to be there when they found out. I couldn’t physically hold their hand, because we filmed a lot of the programme during Covid – but just to be there to help them navigate what it all meant and to make a decision on it was huge.

“Being present at these forever moments is the theme with a lot of the jobs I’ve taken on, whether it’s People’s Postcode Lottery, where I’m giving people cheques for 100 grand or acquiring a holiday home that could be in the family for decades or centuries. It’s seeing that potential for people’s lives to get better after the cameras stop rolling, when they’re excited and making plans for the future.”

Now hitting prime time in a 6pm slot, A Place in the Sun (a regular presenting gig for Johansson since 2018) continues to win the UK’s viewing loyalty. One of Channel 4’s longest-running series, it’s been on air for over 21 years – unsurprisingly perhaps, we’re still all looking for an escape and a peep at what could be in sunnier climes. That, and inspiration for our next balmy mini-break.

“It’s just a period of time when you can escape from everything that’s going on in the world, and off you go to Torrevieja for an hour, or Cyprus or Barbados. It’s a format that works and people are invested in; let’s have a look around the houses, let’s see what they do at the end, and enjoying that journey with the couple. Our casting is open to everyone – we’ve got same-sex couples, we’ve got slightly more mature couples… we just represent the whole country, and I think that’s why the viewers are always rooting for the house hunters.

“A lot of these people don’t have hundreds of thousands of spare pounds sitting around. They’ve worked really hard for it or somehow got to a point where they’ve saved this money. So there’s that other side of it, where people are sitting on the sofa thinking – no matter where they are economically – there’s a chance they could change their own life at some point.”

Read the full feature in our print edition or via the digital flickread on our website