RICHARD EDEN: Is it the tip of the affair for Sarah Beeny’s app?

She has charged through life at what she describes as ‘1,000 miles per hour’, restoring Rise Hall in Yorkshire to stately magnificence, giving birth to four boys in five years and presenting a succession of hit television property shows.

In the process, the irrepressible Sarah Beeny has earned herself an army of fans, many of them men, one of whom, on meeting her, summarised her as ‘foxy [both] on television and in the flesh, fun and funny’.

But, perhaps inevitably, Beeny leaves some panting in her wake – even, it seems, some of her own creations. Indeed, I can disclose that My Single Friend, the online dating site she established two decades ago, is in desperate need of the kiss of life. The company, of which Beeny and her husband, Graham, are two of its three directors, has accumulated towering debts of £1.5million and was threatened with being struck off last month.

Sarah Beeny has earned herself an army of fans, many of them men, one of whom, on meeting her, summarised her as ‘foxy [both] on television and in the flesh, fun and funny’. Pictured, Sarah Beeny poses for a campaign from Affinity Water to help stop the nation wasting £697 million on water bills

The company, of which Beeny and her husband, Graham, are two of its three directors, has accumulated towering debts of £1.5million. (Beeny appears on ITV’s This Morning)

Although that fate has been averted in the last fortnight, My Single Friend would appear in urgent need of re-financing, with documents filed at Companies House revealing that it has burned through all its financial reserves.

Nor, it seems, is there a sugar daddy on hand to help. One of its parent companies, The Dating Lab Ltd, is more than two months late filing its own accounts and has itself been warned that it faces being struck off within two months.

It was all so different when My Single Friend was in the first flush of youth. Established in 2004, it had 100,000 members within three years – to Beeny’s delight. An instinctive matchmaker for friends – ‘even,’ she acknowledged, ‘when they don’t want me to’ – she appeared to have displayed the same acute intuition with which she evaluates the property market.

‘As you get older and you’ve dated your brother’s friends and your friends’ friends, it gets harder,’ she reflected. ‘Everyone’s got a career and you’re down to going to a bar and saying hello to random people.’

Beeny, 52, suggests her passion for the company has waned. ‘I started My Single Friend in 2004 and sold the majority shareholding by 2016,’ she tells me. ‘Since then, I have not been involved in either the management or day to day running of My Single Friend.’