Fame and Fortune: Claire Goose

Actress Claire Goose will be appearing next month in ITV’s police drama The Bill as the new Sergeant Rachel Weston.

Born in Edinburgh, she grew up in Norfolk before attending the Italia Conti stage school in London at 16. She established herself as nurse Tina Seabrook in the BBC drama Casualty and more recently played a detective, Mel Silver, in Waking the Dead. Goose made her movie debut in 2001 in the horror film Alone.

Goose, 33, is married to the scriptwriter Craig Woodrow, 34. They live in Chiswick, west London.

How much money do you have in your wallet?

I have £8.27. I normally don’t take out more than £40 at cash machines. That will last me the week. I’m a slave to work so I don't get a chance to spend much anyway.

I like to have some change for a coffee — there’s a Starbucks round the corner from where we’re filming. I tend to use my debit card for my daily shopping.

Do you have any credit cards?

I have a Virgin Money Visa but I only really use it when I go abroad to take cash out. I know it’s not the most effective way to do it but I’m normally in such a last-minute rush that I never get round to organising things like foreign cash.

I have to say, though, Craig was brilliant when we went to New Zealand for our honeymoon in January. He shopped around and found Nationwide don’t charge fees for foreign cash withdrawals, so we opened an account and put a great big lump sum into it before we went there.

Are you a saver or a spender?

Probably more of a saver although I love spending money on interior decorations. Having said that, I haven’t spent anything on the house recently. We spent a lot of money when we got married so we’ve decided to slow down for a bit.

Whenever I earn money I never for a second think all of the money’s mine. I tell myself that about half of any money I earn is for the taxman.

How much did you earn last year?

With the acting, repeat fees and voiceovers it’s probably getting into the six-figure mark. For a voiceover you might get anywhere between £150 and £250 an hour. You also get paid every time it’s used. I recently did a radio advert for BHS.

I love voiceover work because it’s very different from acting on screen and there isn’t all that pressure for make-up.

Have you ever been really hard up?

When I first came to London from Norfolk, I was quite hard up. I was 16 at the time and at drama school.

Dad gave me an allowance for my living expenses but I remember when my roommate and I had a fiver between us for the whole weekend. We went to the supermarket and bought a box of cereal, a pint of milk, some toast and some butter and that’s all we ate — we were pretty sick of it by the end.

The day I left college, I told dad that I didn’t want any money from him. I wanted to start for myself. I got a part-time job at the NSPCC children’s charity — I didn’t get a full-time job as I needed to be free for things like auditions.

Do you own a property?

We have a two-bedroom maisonette in Shepherds Bush, west London. I bought that in 2002 for £272,000. I lived there for a number of years but I now rent it out. People say it’s worth about £400,000 but you never know in the current market. The mortgage on it is about £282,000 so we probably have about £100,000 or so in equity. We paid off the mortgage on the flat, but we remortgaged that to put a deposit down on our house in Chiswick in 2004. It’s a three-bedroom Victorian terrace which we bought for £410,000. Other places on our road are probably worth about £525,000 to £550,000.

Further decline in UK mortgage lending

New figures released today show gross mortgage lending declined to an estimated £23.8 billion in June, down three per cent from May.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), which compiled the figures, said there had been a 32 per cent fall since June last year.

"Market activity during a traditionally a busy time of year for mortgages has been muted by funding shortages and, more recently, dampened consumer demand," CML director general, Michael Coogan.

"While by historic comparisons we still have had a good level of gross lending, new net lending has been constrained in 2008 and this picture will continue for the rest of this year."

The decline between the first and second quarter was a marginal, at one per cent.

However, the CML would usually expect an increase in spring.

The year-on-year decline has gathered pace in recent months; lending in the first quarter of 2008 was down 11 per cent on 12 months earlier, while the second quarter was down 21 per cent.

"Government efforts to help housing associations purchase new-build properties and borrowers to save for a deposit are welcome, but are likely to have only a marginal impact on the housing market," said Mr Coogan.

This week the government announced a 'rent now, buy later' scheme, with the ambition of getting more first-time buyers onto the housing ladder.

"The recent reduction in short-term fixed-rate mortgage costs is a small bit of welcome news for hard-pressed households facing significant pressures on their finances from the higher cost of food and fuel, in particular," continued Mr Coogan.

"However, borrowers on tight budgets will have to plan ahead to manage higher mortgage payments than they have been used to. Speak to your lender early remains the advice for anyone struggling to pay."

Commenting on the figures Howard Archer, chief economist at analysts Global Insight, said: "There is just no let up on the bad news on the housing market, with the very low level of mortgage activity for house purchases being a consequence of the toxic mix of stretched buyer affordability and very tight lending conditions.

"Elevated affordability pressures on potential house buyers stem from high house prices and modest disposable income growth, while very tight credit conditions have led to markedly fewer and more expensive mortgages being available."

Regulators seize Mortgage lender IndyMac

(RTTNews) - Pasadena, California-based IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IMB: News, Chart, Quote ), the holding company for Indymac Bank FSB, was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision or OTS after the company's failure to raise capital. The regulatory has named Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or FDIC as the Conservator to the run the bank.

OTS specified that, according to FDIC data, IndyMac is the second largest financial institution to close in US history and the largest OTS-regulated thrift ever to fail. IndyMac, which had total assets of $32.01 billion and total deposits of $19.06 billion as of March 31, 2008, now joins the list of financial institutions of major collapse, including Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co., which became insolvent in May 1984, and American Savings & Loan Association in 1998.

IndyMac is specialized in making and selling so-called Alt-A mortgage loans to consumers, who though more credit worthy than subprime borrowers, usually doesn't have complete documentation of income or assets necessary to receive a prime-rate loan.

IndyMac, which was founded as Countrywide Mortgage Investment in 1985, and spun off by Countrywide as an independent company in 1997, came under fire recently when Senator Charles Schumer of New York commented that lax lending standards and deposits purchased from third parties left the bank on the edge of failure.

Making situation worse, issues about taking responsibility of the failure were in a debate. OTS criticized that the immediate cause of the closing of the bank was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter by the Senator. OTS noted that, following the release of that letter expressing concerns about the bank's viability, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts in the following 11 business days. In response, Schumer on Friday said that, "OTS should start doing its job to prevent future IndyMacs "

Commenting on the situation, OTS Director John Reich said, "This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis. Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process."