Grand Designs star Kevin McCloud takes mickey out of himself and his popular TV show
Grand Designs star Kevin McCloud has found ways to keep himself sane in the #iso age where he also found a funny way to film his take on his popular TV series on Binge.
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Beyonce has Sasha Fierce. Bette Midler is the Divine Miss M.
Kevin McCloud, the beloved host of Grand Designs, would like you to meet Barry Tomkins – his new alter ego, created in the isolation age.
Like the rest of the world in lockdown, McCloud has found ways to keep himself sane, including taking the mickey out of himself and his acclaimed lifestyle series.
The short film spoof of the show, which aired on a comedy relief show presented by Little Britain’s Matt Lucas, was made from one room of McCloud’s new home in Bath, England – with the TV favourite taking on the role of cast, crew and craft services.
But such is the quality and high standards of the show he has fronted for 21 years, McCloud realised a few days into his two-week quarantine project he had built a rod for his own back.
“You can’t make a spoof Grand Designs and make it on your iPhone,” the charming TV presenter tells Hibernation.
“The production values of this thing are so high … it’s so beautifully put together and great to watch that in the end I had to script it … I’ve got a professional camera, so I could shoot it well and light it as best I could.”
The four-minute two-hander, streaming now on YouTube (see above), takes on all McCloud’s presenting quirks – the lyrical soliloquys, the soothing soundtrack – as he follows Barry’s ‘journey’ building a cardboard kit home in miniature.
“The conceit of it is that Barry is into model railways, and so am I, so he buys an old railway station and he’s building a modern conversion on the back. It’s a cardboard kit from a company in Yorkshire who make these beautiful little kits that you make and glue and paint and stick and whatever.”
Like every project featured on Grand Designs, Barry’s model hits a few hurdles, as McCloud’s satirical voiceover details: “Barry may not be pregnant in a caravan, but his is a desperate uphill struggle to meet his [tea time] deadline.”
His gift for comedy is yet another quality to love about the 61-year-old, cherished for his intellect and passion for architecture and design.
As the pandemic forced us all indoors, McCloud concedes, like most people, he found himself focusing on existing more happily in his own home.
He’s just not one for making sour dough, as has been the fashion.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, no,” McCloud exclaims, “but I do have an allotment down the road, so I’ve been growing a lot of veg. I’ve spent my days doing a combination of model making, growing veg and DIY.”
With rare downtime, he’s ventured out of his study and into the kitchen to cook.
“I cooked this evening,” he boasts, proudly, “and if you grow vegetables, not only do you cook but I spent an hour and a half washing everything covered in soil. We cycle up to the allotment, water the allotment, pick the veg, and plant and it’s been really quite productive. It’s the middle of our summer here … so it’s good fun.”
Now, as restrictions start to ease both here and the UK, McCloud believes our artisan ways will disappear just as quickly as we adopted them.
“I suspect on the one hand, the moment you take the clamps off, it will immediately revert to the economic mayhem we had beforehand. So on the one hand, the delicate, more socially aware, generous, spiritually more heightened state that we went into … examining our navels and our inner selves … and all going green at the same time … you know, not travelling, not burning fuel, growing our own, making our sour dough. I just think that’s going to go straight out the window and we’ll all go shopping again.”
Cambridge University-educated McCloud shows he’s the everyman, confessing he’s become a slave to online shopping during lockdown.
“Everything’s been shut and I’m asthmatic so I haven’t been to a single shop since February. Instead, I’ve single-handedly kept Jeff Bezos a billionaire. Amazon has become my lifeline. “This morning, I’ve had deliveries that included a saw … that was Amazon. And for the larder, I bought a leg of ham, a Spanish leg of the pig, that was Amazon too. And an entire Italian wheel of cheese came three days ago.
“There had to be treats.”
And like most people struggling to work from home, McCloud adds that he’s also continued filming Grand Designs for the duration of quarantine; under duress, it must be said.
“The people who work for Grand Designs number in the region of probably about 35 and I’m trying to do everything in one room,” he exclaims.
“It just takes forever … and there are limitations to my camera skills too, I can tell you. And there are limitations to my tolerance too … they sent me a camera and lights, and it’s all dodgy. Something goes wrong every day with the equipment and I have to learn how to fix it. It was like being on a desert island, really.”
His last trip before border closures, McCloud reveals, was to Australia, where he delivered the key note speech for the Australian Institute of Architects in February.
It came just days after the bushfire threat had lifted across Canberra and the NSW south coast, inspiring deep consideration by McCloud about how we should rebuild.
“I thought this a lot when I was in Australia because the fires were very fresh in everyone’s minds, but the best architecture is the best design … design that is resilient.
“There’s this great American architect … Charles Moore and he would say ‘architecture should be an instrument of connection not an instrument of isolation.’ And so, much of what we’ve built since the middle of the 20th century has been very isolating. It’s encouraged us to get into our individual little tin boxes [cars] and drive home to our individual little wood boxes, then sit down on our sofa and watch another little box that sits in the corner. It’s all very isolating and contained.
“What the fires did was suddenly bring communities together and I’m hopeful that in finding our way forward we built houses that not only do they have to be resilient in delating with the climatic confrontations we will face – whether that is viruses or fires or big temperature differentials, for example – not only does it have to be intelligent by design, and clever, and green, because it has to try to do this without relying on lots of fossil fuels … but I hope we do it in a community way.”
* Grand Designs, season 17 returns 7.40pm, Sunday June 7 on ABC. All previous seasons streaming on BINGE. New to Binge, sign up for your free two-week trial at binge.com.au