DIY SOS host Nick Knowles has admitted he cannot assemble flat-pack furniture.

The 62-year-old Strictly star works with tradespeople to transform homes for deserving families on the BBC One show.

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But he revealed his family “laugh at him” when he tries DIY.

However, dad-of-four Nick still reckons he could build his own house.

In an interview with The Times T2 supplement yesterday, Nick said: “My family laugh when I try to assemble flat-packs.

“I get frustrated because, like most men, I don’t read the instructions.”

“But I could build my own house — easily. One day I just might.”

 Nick — who has been married twice and is now engaged to lingerie business owner Katie Dadzie, 34 — also revealed he has lost more than two stone since he began training for Strictly four weeks ago.

He said: “This is much tougher than rugby training.

“I can feel myself transforming from a very heavy bloke lumbering around the room to somebody who’s becoming lighter and more elegant on his feet.”

Meanwhile, Nick has been in hot water after he said women in the North East of England were “munters” in a sleazy chat with a young charity worker, it has been claimed.

The TV favourite allegedly made a string of lewd and offensive remarks to the woman and ogled her breasts while filming BBC show DIY SOS: The Big Build.

It left the 33-year-old support worker feeling embarrassed and mortified, she claimed.

The mum of one said she was interviewed by Knowles in 2018 for an episode of the show about a home renovation for a family with a young disabled child.

She claims he turned up late after boozing the night before — and later kipped in a van.

Knowles was said to have been hung over, looked worse for wear and stank of stale booze and cigarettes after partying at North Shields Fish Quay.

When the then 26-year-old dropped her microphone down her blouse, the star allegedly said: “It’s a shame that’s not a camera.”

The woman, who posed for a photo with the star, said he did not touch her or make a pass.

Knowles said he had encountered hundreds of people in the course of his work and cannot be expected to remember what he has said to everyone he has met.

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NCIS star Pauley Perrette has addressed her decision to retire from acting, explaining why fans will “never again” see her on screen.

Perrette, 55, who played the lovable and quirky forensic scientist Abby on the popular CBS police procedural since its 2003 premiere, left the series in 2018 and went into retirement.

Two years later, she briefly returned to front CBS’s short-lived 2020 sitcom Broke, which was canceled after just one season.

Soon after the comedy’s cancelation, Perrette tweeted: “I’m HAPPILY RETIRED! Finally! Woot! All I ever wanted.”

In a subsequent post, she clarified: “Actually I retired after NCIS but BROKE was important, beautiful. I did my last dance & am proud of it! Everyone that knows me knew I was retiring right after. I’m proud of my work. I love you guys! I AM FREE!!! (To be the tiny little simple human I am!).”

Speaking to Hello Magazine in a rare new interview, Perrette discussed why she has no plans of ever returning to the screen.

“I’m not ungrateful for the benefits that it gave to me,” she said of acting. “But I’m a different person now and I want to be here for it – the good and the bad and the painful. I want to be me all the time, and it takes a good amount of courage for me to say that to myself but it’s authentically how I feel.”

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Perrette began acting in the Nineties. She landed her first screen credit in a single 1994 episode of ABC’s long-running drama After School Specials. She later made appearances in the Oscar-nominated 2000 comedy Almost Famous and the classic TV drama Dawson’s Creek before landing the role of Abby on NCIS.

For 15 years, she endeared herself to viewers as the goth-dressing, witty forensic scientist, starring alongside Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, Sean Murray and the late David McCallum.

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Following her departure, Perrette claimed on X that her exit was due in part to “multiple physical assaults” that occured on set.

NCIS Executive Producer Charles Floyd Johnson shed more light on the incident in an oral history published by The Hollywood Reporter last September.

“In Pauley Perrette’s case, there was an incident with the show with a dog. The dog was Harmon’s, and apparently the dog bit someone,” Johnson said. “Pauley was a huge, huge SPCA [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] animal person. And then the dog kept coming with Harmon, and she felt it wasn’t safe for the show. By the end of that year, she just felt like it wasn’t working for her anymore, and it was time to move on.”

Harmon, who led the series as special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, remained on the show three years beyond Perrette before exiting in 2021. However, he is still an executive producer for the NCIS franchise.

NCIS will air its season 22 premiere on CBS on October 14.

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Australian TV host Fiona MacDonald announced her own death on social media with a statement prepared for the event of her passing.

MacDonald, known for hosting popular Australian shows including It’s a Knockout and Wombat, was 67. News of her death comes nearly three years after she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND).

On Thursday (October 3), MacDonald’s sister shared the post written by the late presenter confirming she had died the night before.

“Farewell my friends. My sister Kylie is posting this because I have left the building,” the post began. “Hopefully I’m looking down from a cloud. Last night brought an end to a very tough few months. Was very peaceful the boys and Kylie stayed with me to say goodbye. While I’ve never wanted to die, the thought of leaving my tortured body was a relief.”

She continued: “The last few months have been tough. Unable to swallow normal food, the tube feeding that should have sustained me didn’t work because my gut couldn’t tolerate any of the multiple brands of protein drinks. It went straight in and straight out.

“I have been slowly starving, growing weaker and weaker. I’ve also developed terrible back pain because my muscles aren’t supporting my frame.

“The black humour that served me well through the first years of this journey turned to despair. I made the decision after much soul searching to cease all medical supports and finally go into hospital for end of life palliative care. When you love life as much as I do, it takes a great deal of courage to make choices that lead to farewell.

“So let’s not call it goodbye as I hope to see you again on the other side. Until then: ‘May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, May the rain fall softly upon your fields until we meet again, And may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.’“I carry your love and laughter with me and hope you’ll remember mine.”

Macdonald rose to fame in the 1980s, hosting the children’s TV series Wombat between 1983 and 1984 and the game show It’s a Knockout between 1985 and 1987.

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Speaking to ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Jenny Woodward, who worked with MacDonald on Wombat, remembered her as “one of those people that lit up the room when she walked in.”

“She had a cheeky sense of humour and an infectious laugh and always had a keen eye for a story.”

Jamie Dunn, the puppeteer behind Agro, told 4BC: “It is confronting that life is so cruel at times… All I remember Fiona for is laughing.”

Before her death, MacDonald raised A$223,000 ($153,000) for MND research by taking part in a road trip around Australia with her sister Kylie, which was televised in a 2023 episode of Australian Story, titled The Big Lap – Fiona MacDonald.

By the time the episode was filmed, she was unable to speak and had to use a computer to communicate.

“This is not a disease for the faint-hearted. There is no treatment, no cure… stealing the power of all muscles inch by inch until you can’t walk, can’t hold hands, can’t talk, swallow or breathe,” she said. “Then you die.”

MacDonald is survived by her two sons Harry and Rafe, as well as sisters Kylie and Jacki MacDonald.