There’s an aphorism that Australians only want to talk about two things – sport and real estate. Do you think we talk too much about real estate?
In my experience, Australians never talk about real estate but the Australian media talks about it all the time. It’s a little bit like politics in the UK, where the right wing occupy a tiny minority and yet they’re all over the BBC. The media will always pick up on something they think should be the topic of national conversation because it sells newspapers. But in my dealings with Australians, I find I talk about pretty well every other subject. There is something very exciting about Australia’s can-do attitude. The British national default is to say, “Maybe, I don’t know – ask me in six months”. We’re very good at circumlocuting an issue. But the moment I get off the plane in Australia, it is, “What can we do?” I love the optimism of Australia.
[Tim & Kev’s Big Design Adventure co-host] Tim Ross and I are currently selling tickets for our live show and I have been wanting it to go more slowly. There’s no reason why I should be like this – diffident and British and not wanting the thing to be a success.
What is the most important room in a house?
Any room with a lock on it is quite good. Most teenagers will agree with me on that. There’s a beautiful book that was given to me by a friend recently, called The Poetics of Space by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. What he says is that all our relationships with place, and therefore real estate, are forged in our childhoods and the houses in which we grow up. He says there’s something that buildings do that defines our home, which is providing a space for intimacy – not physical intimacy but psychological. It is really important that you have a space, perhaps a corner of a room or a window with a view, where you can daydream and know that you can do so safely.
‘Australia is the most fantastic destination for modernism.’ Kevin McCloud in Sydney. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
What’s one Australian building you would take back to England?
So many Australian buildings are unique to their place and consequently not easily transportable. Growing up in the UK, the Sydney Opera House was always so important in my mind because it was on the airmail postmark. I have loads of family in Australia – my parents had their £10 pom tickets and then my mum discovered she was pregnant with me so they cancelled.
You were almost Australian, Kevin!
Yes! I actually have more relatives in Australia now than I have in the UK. But rather than take the Opera House – a lovely thing about Australia is the way it takes its 19th- and 20th-century history really seriously. Australia is the most fantastic destination for modernism. And up the road from Tim’s house in Sydney, there is a bungalow that is the most exquisitely conserved piece of 1920s architecture. I would put one of those bungalows in every town in Britain, and I would say, “Look at this! All that plastic double glazing you put in, that big garage you put up, the paint colours you’re choosing, the porch you bolted on the back – this is the perfect thing.”
Is there a particular trend in design right now that you find depressing?
Too many bathrooms. I often visit homes where there are more toilets than human beings occupying the building. Even if you have a party for 100 people, no more than two people at any one moment are going to want to have a wee. Now we measure the value of a home by the number of toilets and bathrooms it has, which is bonkers. I’ve just finished doing up a little barn and I got so incensed by this idea of the bathroom being this object of financial fetish that there is only one toilet and it is the only room in the house with a door. You know, the wall behind me actually is a bat loft – we’ve lost about 15% of the footprint of the building because it’s now dedicated towards a rare species of bats. That’s British planning law for you. If the historic mob don’t get you, the bats will. I love having a bat loft though.
The great American architect Charles Moore once said, architecture should be an instrument of connection – not isolation. We build these perfect worlds with all these toilets and makeup mirrors and media rooms, so each household can live in a castle and you can pull up the drawbridge to be entirely independent of your neighbours and the natural world. It can’t come in and you don’t need to go out. We pursued a very self-centred agenda. This is all to say – I’d go for the bats every time.
Who is the most famous person in your phone?
Wouldn’t that be bragging?
Yeah, that’s the point.
Well … you meet a few people along the way because of the club I’m in, which is the club of TV people. People who are in the public eye and therefore also have to deal with social media and the constant clamouring for a selfie. And you’ve always got something to talk about, right? So there’s Monty Don, who lives near me. He’s very private and I’m very private, but occasionally we have a chin wag.
What are you secretly really good at?
Increasingly, with age, I think I’m much less good at things than I thought I was. I can build – I physically rebuilt the building I’m sitting in, and I can do a bit of woodwork and joinery. But I’m not confident about any of it and consequently I like to employ plumbers, electricians and curtain makers now. The arrogance of youth is fantastic, isn’t it? I don’t believe there’s such a thing as the arrogance of old age, that’s for sure.
What is the weirdest thing you have eaten?
For the purposes of television, I’ve been made to eat all kinds of things. I don’t really have a sense of smell, which is a huge advantage. I’ve had insects, frogs legs, eyeballs of goat – it sounds like a witch’s recipe. I once made coffee out of dandelion root, which was quite delicious. And I brewed some oak beer out of acorns, which I didn’t like much. I’ve had some fermented shark, which had been buried underground in Iceland. It’s absolutely foul. You don’t need to eat it to imagine what it tastes like. Like eating vomit mixed with ammonia. And I have to do all this stuff on camera.
What book, album or film do you always return to and why?
I watched Trading Places last night. It’s Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd at their peak, and the whole cast are Hollywood greats of the 20th century. But the language and some of the ideas are beginning to feel very uncomfortable now. It deals with racism head-on, right? But the language of the early 80s is embarrassing now. But I do cling to the fact it deals with race and issues of privilege. So I love it; I salute it, almost. But I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to watch it before it becomes unacceptable.
If you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?
I am so tempted to just describe my favourite sandwich. But if it was named after me, it would have to be super sustainable and contain wood chips or something eco-friendly. Yes – it would be structural insulated panels filed with recycled expanded polystyrene.
What’s been your most memorable interaction with a fan?
This is something that happens regularly and it always blows me over: when somebody in their 30s comes up to me and says, “I’m an architect or an engineer, and what got me into it was watching Grand Designs when I was eight with my mum and dad.” Of course, I’m not at all responsible for anybody making these decisions. But the thing is, television just disappears and sometimes you think, “That’s my entire life and there’s nothing to see for it.” It’s just arseing around in front of a camera. So when someone says that, that’s powerful. It validates the job. It is what a vain television person like me dreams of hearing.
