According to legend, a milkman turned up early one morning at Oliver Reed’s house to find the actor had been up all night and was not entirely sober. Legend is rather vague about the subsequent events, but the actor is supposed to have kidnapped the milkman and taken him to London for a two-day drinking binge of epic proportions. The milkman was duly sacked, but Reed took him on as a gardener and doubled his wages. That house was Pinkhurst Farm, which also briefly belonged to Jim Davidson and is today known by the more upmarket title of The Okewood Hill Estate.

If you’ve made a few bob and are keen to acquire the trappings of wealth, you’ll find a pretty full complement of trappings here. For a start, it’s in the middle of Surrey’s investment banker belt. You enter the grounds through hefty oak gates, operated from the house, and crunch your way down a gravel drive that cost £280,000 to lay.

At the front door — which has a sign warning: “Poachers will be shot” — you’ll notice the sound of running water to your right. That’s a heated koi carp lake, said to be the largest in the country. There is a strict law in this country that you cannot be self-made wealthy without keeping koi carp, but just to emphasise the point, Okewood also has its own heliport, stables, paddocks and a sand school, a private cinema, a lavish home office and a staff cottage, all set in 22 acres of grounds.

Spencer Day, the owner, has been delayed at a meeting on the day of my visit, but eventually arrives in his Aston Martin DBS. I must emphasise at this point that Day, 38, is not a property developer. Absolutely no way. I might have had my suspicions, but I withdraw the accusation without reservation.

According to recent research, people with tidy homes have higher moral standards than the rest of us. In which case Day is the nation’s most morally upstanding man. If he grew a beard, they’d make him the Archbishop of Canterbury. Everybody tidies up when they’re expecting guests, but even so: there were no carelessly discarded magazines, no towels out of place in any of the countless bathrooms. Despite the evidence of two dogs and family photographs, it looked like a show house. Hence my terrible accusation.

“I’m not a property developer,” Day said, looking hurt at the very suggestion. “I’m a venture capitalist.” And a great disappointment to his neighbours, who’d heard a rumour that Robbie Williams had moved in. They sent polite letters asking if he might be available to open fetes.

You think I’m exaggerating about this tidiness thing? Well, as we hovered briefly on the threshold of the master bedroom, he apologised for the mess. Yet the only thing you could remotely describe as clutter was a collection of 40 pairs of sunglasses, neatly arranged on a shelf. Day is a bit of a detail man, you see. His kitchen cupboards are monogrammed with “OH”.

He bought the house in 2006 from Davidson, after the comedian apparently discovered the difficulties of supporting four ex-wives on a single income. That’s one of the reasons the name has changed: people kept coming to the door and wondering if Jim was in.

When it first went on the market in 2004, the asking price was £4m, but Day got it for “just over £2.5m”. The interior was all sunken spa baths and tiger-print cushions, but they went in a refit that cost “more than £5m”. The place now has the feel of a small but discerning hotel that specialises in what they would probably call top-end business clients.

There’s a lot of honey-oak panelling, marble floors and a dining room that might feel more at home hosting board meetings. There is music pumped into pretty much every room (thank you, Bang & Olufsen) and plasma televisions in the bedrooms. But it’s large, light, airy and uncluttered (as I might have suggested at some length earlier).

“We’ve kept the original features of the house, but tried to give it a modern feel,” says Day, who is building a new home in Effingham, 10 miles to the north and closer to his children’s school. “Someone had put in some godawful partitions to make 15 bedrooms. We took those out.” One feature he has kept, however, is the 1970s kitchen cabinet — now in a staff kitchen — on which Oliver Reed branded his initials.

Not that you’d notice anything unusual from the outside, which is as magnificently English as Vera Lynn and Spitfires. The house, thought to date from the 16th century, is red brick with exposed timber beams and leaded lights. At the back, where Davidson had a recording studio, is Day’s office. The wood here is darker and rather serious — “A lot of very powerful people come here,” he says — apart from the boardroom table that turns into a pool table.

Ah yes, pool. I nearly forgot. Day is particularly proud of his indoor swimming pool, right at the centre of the house. “I suppose everybody’s swimming pool is important to them,” he says. Quite so. This one is lined with black mosaic tiles, interspersed every so often with gold ones. “I probably wouldn’t put in quite so many next time,” he admits.

Just before we leave — making our way into the music gallery, which consists of just a grand piano and a saxophone on a stand — we notice a pair of swimming goggles at the bottom of the pool. “You see,” he says, triumphantly. “We do live here.”

Daisy Waugh returns on November 15; daisy.waugh@sunday-times.co.uk

THE OKEWOOD HILL ESTATE, SURREY, £12M

What is it? A six-bedroom, Grade II-listed, 16th-century house

Where is it? Near Ockley, eight miles from Guildford

Who’s selling it? Hamptons International; 01483 572864, hamptons.co.uk

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