Anna Caroline Ryder Richardson (born 29 January 1964) is a British interior designer and television presenter. She is known for being a designer on the BBC shows Changing Rooms and the subject of Chaos at the Zoo, which documents her ownership of Manor House Wildlife Park in Pembrokeshire. She also appeared on CBBC show Hider in the House alongside Cameron Biswas.

Personal life

Anna Ryder Richardson was born in Swansea in 1964. Her father was a Malaysian student, and her mother English. At six weeks of age, she was adopted by Colin and Jill Ryder Richardson, and raised in Surrey with her adopted sister Sarah. Her adoptive father was a World War II evacuee who survived the sinking of the SS City of Benares by a German U-boat; he spent his career as a Lloyd's underwriter. She was introduced to her partner, restaurateur Colin MacDougall, by Gregg Wallace at his restaurant on New Year's Eve 2000, and they married at a private ceremony in the Canadian Rockies. Their first child, Bean, was born prematurely and died less than 60 minutes after birth. She was cast as one of the interior designers on Changing Rooms where she sprang to fame for her bold interior design choices. She worked on a number of smaller shows, including House Invaders, Staying Put and Trading Spaces. None of these had the same mainstream success as Changing Rooms, and in 2006, reconsidered the direction of her career.

In 2017, it was announced that she would return to interior design, appearing as a designer on Peter Andre's 60 Minute Makeover.

Wildlife park

Ryder Richardson appeared in a string of reality TV shows to fund a lifetime ambition of owning a zoo. She appeared on the BBC Sport Relief event Only Fools on Horses, and the 2007 series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (where she was the sixth person to leave). She said she was "unprepared" for these experiences and described her experiences as "unpleasant", but that she developed a good relationship with co-star Christopher Biggins. Her experiences at the zoo have been the subject of a number of television series, including Chaos at the Zoo, Anna's Welsh Zoo and Wild Welsh Zoo. She was charged for health and safety violations in 2012, after a mother and son were injured by a falling tree, but acquitted after her husband admitted that work fell under his remit. As of 2020, she still owns the park.

References

  • Ryder Richardson bio at UKTV
  • Manor House Wildlife Park Tenby