Duration: 3:05

6 views

0

What I discovered about the real Taylor Swift when I visited her £40m home

What I discovered about the real Taylor Swift when I visited her £40m home: The superfan invited into her house reveals the star's secret doors hidden in bookcases and what she keeps in the toilet

If anyone ever doubted Taylor Swift's megastar status, the reaction to her 11th studio album could not have been more emphatic.

The Tortured Poets Department — her surprise double album released on Friday — broke streaming records across all the major platforms, from Spotify to Apple Music. It's the first album in Spotify history to have over 300 million streams in a single day; it's the biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams on Apple Music; and on the day of its release, became the most streamed album on Amazon Music — ever.

Which is probably why information on the billionaire singer, however inconsequential, is now a huge commodity.

Step forward Tyler Conroy, a self-confessed superfan who has been hired by ITV's This Morning to be the show's first Taylor Swift correspondent. According to Conroy, who has followed her for 16 years, Swift remains determinedly down-to-earth despite her immense stardom. Her biggest weakness: monogrammed bath towels. Monochrome, with TS embroidered on them, to be precise.

Conroy, a 31-year-old Massachusetts-born influencer, has been following Ms Swift since 2008. Aged 15, he began having guitar lessons so that he could learn to play every song from her second album, Fearless. He penned the 2016 biography Taylor Swift: This Is Our Song.

The undoubted zenith of Conroy's life, Tyler says, took place when he was invited to spend the day with his idol at her New York home after putting on a musical in her honour.

There, he and other select fans were given free rein over the star's downstairs living quarters — using her bathroom (and those monogrammed towels), helping themselves to anything from her giant fridge that was filled to the brim with her beloved Diet Coke, eating pizza, and wandering around her library where Taylor likes to retreat to read Harry Potter novels.

Her protective father, Scott, was even there at the time, relaxing in the TV nook.

And the music in the background as the astonished superfan made himself at home? Taylor's chart-topping hit Shake It Off, of course.

Taylor, 34, bought the seven-bedroom $18 million (£15 million) Tribeca townhouse from Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson in 2014. When she was considering its purchase, Sir Ian McKellen was lodging there, as Tyler reveals: 'Her father told me when Taylor went to look at her apartment Ian McKellen was sat there at the dining table in his pyjamas.'

After McKellen moved out to make way for her, Taylor then expanded the property, snapping up three units in the building next door for just under $10m (£8m) each, before combining the top two floors together to create one vast space, spanning 8,300 sq ft.

Today, the property is estimated to be worth $50m (£40m). Inside, says Tyler, the decor is rather rustic. Taylor is notoriously private when it comes to sharing her life at home, but in those few pictures of her apartment on social media you can see her yellow-walled kitchen has white, rather country-style cupboard doors and wooden beams that span the ceiling. A large wooden dining table has pride of place.

Another room has a large TV hidden in a wardrobe, concealed behind some dainty looking Laura Ashley-style white curtains.

Red walls, velvet couches and neoclassical chandeliers throughout also complete the look.

Tyler tells me more: 'Taylor had the whole top floor. Everything was brown, it was in an old New York style with a red sofa and a nook.

'Her dad was sat there when I was there and told me they had watched Frozen a few weeks before. It was so cute.

'I played with her pet cats and it was then I noticed that there was a birdcage with a broken Grammy award in it. Taylor had broken it [after dropping it at the awards ceremony] and she wanted to look after it by putting it in the cage.'

Unsurprisingly, awards litter the house, says Tyler: 'They were all over the place, there were a couple on the fireplace. There was even one on the top of the toilet, I have never seen anything like that before. Most people have some potpourri or some flowers but she had a Grammy award on her loo.'

And the apartment's crowning glory was undoubtedly the bathroom. 'To get to [it] there is a secret door behind a bookcase. It's a kind of speak-easy,' reveals Tyler.

The singer also has a Polaroid camera on a cupboard in the lounge, as she likes to take regular shots off the cuff. Indeed, her walls are covered with many Polaroid pictures of her family.

#taylorswift #harrypotter #itv #thismorning