Q&A: Kevin McCloud, TV presenter, 60

Kevin McCloud on the worst project they’ve ever had on Grand Designs and why he’d like to emigrate Down Under.

Eye for detail: Kevin McCloud.

You’ve hosted TV’s Grand Designs for two decades. What keeps you there? Extremely long contracts, and the desire to see things to completion. The series The Street, for instance, was meant to be done in two years and it took six. It’s the story of my life… give me a deadline and I like to triple it.

What have you learnt about people along the way? Everything we do is bound up with the noble aspirations of our species, but also its flaws. I’ve learnt that hope is fantastically powerful – it can take us to the edge of a cliff and then push us off, still in the belief it’s all going to be rosy. There are all those biblical emotions that colour our judgment – envy, greed, avarice, zeal, faith... it’s remarkable, isn’t it, that human beings pour this great cocktail of powerful drives into a project as simple as building a house. I never cease to be amazed.

What’s the worst project you’ve had on the show? For me, it’s not so much about taste as process. One project was a kind of perverse defiance of the process an architect would engage in: research, review, questioning and testing. It was a guy converting a barge into a houseboat who had no plan, whose philosophy was that the lords and ladies of happenstance would decide what the houseboat looked like. I’d ask about windows and he’d say, “I’m not going to look very hard – the ones I find will be the ones that are intended for me.” It didn’t end up looking like a complete dog’s dinner – in places it was quite interesting – but in terms of ergonomics, comfort, joy, delight, it was a disaster.

If we could teleport the Grand Designs crew to your childhood home in England in the early ’60s, what might we see? It was a catastrophe inasmuch as my parents had bought a house that had been semi-built, very badly. It was already heading for the skip, as they say. My dad spent his entire time adding extensions or rebuilding, taking things apart and putting them back together. I think it meant we three boys were not afraid of the world, how it works.

As a kid, looking up at your Thunderbirds wallpaper and reading science fiction, how might you have imagined life in 2019? I was surrounded by interpretations of the future, including [Thunderbirds creator] Gerry Anderson’s amazing modernist architecture, comic books, and a magazine called World of Wonder… and here we are, and the greatest threat is not from alien planets but from our own activities. There’s a lot in the balance, but it’s an incredible time to be alive.

You’ve described yourself as “European first, Citizen of the World second, Honorary Yorkshireman third”. How’s Brexit going for you? As a nation we are rocked to our foundations with a crisis of identity. It’s very hard to see a way forward... that’s why I’m coming to Australia [laughs], to cheer myself up! I shall be making a live appeal in my show every night to any immigration officers in the audience.

The show promises “some very poor music and maybe a little construction mayhem”. As someone who has studied opera, will you be singing? And should I bring my spirit level? I certainly will not be singing! It’s an evening of talking, and a few games – including a modified version of the Grand Designs drinking game. And the only spirit level you’ll need to bring is one that can augment your happiness. I will be talking quite a lot about trees, and about cushions.

The World According to Kevin tours nationally February 13-25, starting at the Perth Concert Hall; kevinmccloudlive.com.au Grand Designs: The Street is on ABC iview