Yahoo News Kevin McCloud: ‘I can spend 15 hours making an IKEA table’
Best and worst is a regular interview in which a celebrity reflects on the highs and lows of their life
Born in Bedfordshire in 1959, Kevin McCloud studied singing at the Florence Conservatory of Music after his A-levels but, persuaded by his father, returned to the UK to study history of art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. After university he worked as a theatre designer before setting up his own lighting design practice, and in 1999 he began presenting Grand Designs on Channel 4, which is now in its 22nd series. He has two children, Milo and Elsie with his ex-wife Suzanna McCloud, and two, Hugo and Grace, from a previous relationship. He now lives near Hereford with his second wife Jenny Jones.
Best childhood memory?
Being on holiday in Cornwall with my parents and cousins. We would go every year to this little cottage and just muck about on beaches. I remember visiting this castle with a very steep 45-degree grass moat where you could just be free and roam wildly. We just rolled down this slope again and again and again and it just threw blood to the sides of your brain, and then my dad did it with us and my uncle did it with his daughters and we kept on doing it until eventually my dad was told off by an official and it was that moment where I realised that I could do stuff with my dad and that he wasn’t just the voice of authority. He wasn’t just this figure of stern seriousness. I realised that he had a playful side.
Best day of your life?
I can’t identify the best single day but there have been moments and periods of great elation. The period when I lived and worked in Italy when I was 18, was definitely one of them. There were days, perhaps half a dozen of them, where I remember working in fields just looking after vines. I just remember sitting in the vineyards reading EM Forster, reading about Tuscany, and realising that my role in the universe was so infinitesimal and irrelevant and feeling awe at the natural environment. And that sense of the sublime has lived with me ever since and it’s formed the roots of my campaign for the environment and to see a greener planet.
Best moment at Cambridge?
Even though I felt like a fish out of water at Cambridge, I did enjoy myself there. I did lots of singing and lots of studying, and generally hectic, chaotic times involving performance, alcohol and pizza – that classic student combo.
Best Grand Designs development?
It’s the project in Northern Ireland where Patrick Bradley built his own house. It was redemptive for him because it took him from being a young architect designing homes for his family, to being kind of an international superstar. This house also found him a wife and he now has a family and they all live there. Patrick has become a good mate. The house is beautiful, and it’s won all these awards. It’s a great building made out of four shipping containers, it cost 120 grand to build, it ticks all the boxes, and Patrick was just very abstemious with it. I love that kind of architecture. It’s just enough and it’s very respectful of where it is.
Best TV adventure?
Doing the voiceover for the show Celebrity Snoop Dog during the pandemic was certainly a departure. In lockdown, I thought: “This is the end of my career. How am I going to pay the mortgage?” So I just did whatever came in the door, and not much did. But this show did. Everybody on television was going: “What can we do? I know; dogs can go into buildings. Let’s strap a camera to a dog. And then that way we can film a building without people, and then we can do the interview with them at the end of the day on a static camera.” It was all filmed within lockdown rules and the dog became the most obvious way out of the hole. And as for my profound, sage closing monologues, I did have to deliver them in a slightly different tone. I have to say it was refreshing though.
Best personality trait?
I’m pretty patient. I have to be, to have watched people take a decade to build a house. I have no problem being mindful. I tend to actually go into hyper focus, so I can sit and work on a book or assemble an Ikea table, and I’ll do it for 15 hours happily without eating or drinking, which is not always a good thing.
Best advice?
My father shared this quote with me, and it’s a really good one. At the time, I didn’t understand it but now that I’m nearly 65, I do. The original quote was this: “When I was 20, I was worried about what people thought about me. When I was 40, I stopped worrying about what people thought about me. And when I was 60, I realised they weren’t thinking about me in the first place.” My reinterpreted version is: “When I was 20, I was worried that people weren’t taking me seriously. When I was 40, I realised that I wasn’t thinking about whether they took me seriously anymore. Now I’m 60 I realise they just don’t take me seriously.”
Worst childhood memory?
I was bullied a lot in school, physically and verbally. I was academic, but I wasn’t good at sports and didn’t fit in and it’s taken me all of my life to realise why. My biggest regret about my childhood is not realising just how formative and influential those experiences are, in terms of who you grow up to be. All my life, until the last 10 years, I’ve tried to be somebody that I wanted to be. And at the same time, my very nature had been shaped by those experiences. Lots of therapy has sparked my shift from who I thought I should be to who I actually am now. And also, those around me, helping me. It’s been amazing and continues to be amazing, to go on a journey to discover that you’re not who you thought you were, and what drives you and what makes you is not what you thought it was.
Worst moment of your life?
There were only a few of those moments and they’re all about the day people die. I’ve lost both my parents, but losing my dad was probably the hardest thing of all. I felt very much as if my compass had just been snatched. That was in 2004 and I still miss him every day but when I think of him it’s always a good memory. How does that quote go? “The person goes, but the relationship carries on.”
Worst Grand Designs disaster?
The one that everybody remembers is the project in North Devon; of Ed’s lighthouse, which was just such a fabulous example of overreaching, of hubris, of delusion, self-delusion. And it was a grim story because he lost his marriage – they divorced – because of the project. And he lost everything he owned. He nearly lost his relationship with his two daughters. At the end of the first film, I talked about overreaching and then we went back to the revisit, and he’d found extra finances, he was finished, he was in control of it, and he was putting it on the market. He’d become great friends with his wife, he’d rebuilt his relationship with his daughters, and you realised somebody can go through hell, and then come back again.
Worst public building project?
There are too many badly built housing schemes that will leave the people living in them with huge energy bills to mention, but in terms of sheer jarring design I’m going to give you two waste refuse power stations: one on the M5 at Gloucester and the other on the M1 near Nottingham. Putting aside the fact that turning domestic refuse into energy is the most appalling, barbaric way of avoiding recycling, these are buildings, which are purely functional pieces of engineering. If they’d just left them with a chimney like a steelworks, it would have been in a way heroic, but they’re dressed them with some steel sheets. They’re f****ing monstrosities.
Worst personality trait?
Let’s just say that television is a very good medium for me to work in, because it allows me to be very controlled in a very disciplined way. It’s very focused, and it’s quite a narrow range and narrow bandwidth of engagement. My whole life, if I’m not careful, can become chaotic. The problem is that I’ve had a set of issues all my life, and it’s to do with bandwidth. If there’s too much traffic, I shut down. If somebody sends me too many texts, by which I mean three, I shut down. As I’ve got older, I’ve got to understand myself better but also, I’ve got worse, but I think that’s to be expected. That’s why grumpy old men are grumpy as well as being old.
Kevin McCloud was speaking ahead of Grand Designs Live, the premier home exhibition, taking place at London ExCel between 4th – 12th May https://www.granddesignslive.com/+
