What Kevin McCloud REALLY Thinks - scoop No. 1 from a Grand Designer's secret diary

Derelict Irish Church awaiting Idiot Irish Restorer (photo by Lesley)

Close Encounters of an Architectural Kind

All those opportunities to interpret a ruse, down the plughole - damn, why didn't I think of it earlier, that is, before the 17th re-run of the collected box sets of Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs.

I've been sitting dumbly bemused through countless scenes of crimes against architecture imagining Sir Kevin condoned these dismaying acts when, had I perceived the obvious, I might have stepped up (in my characteristic modest way) and enlightened my reader as to KMac's true feelings.

He's been designing episodes grandly since post-and-lintel construction burst upon the unsuspecting world of hunter/gather. He has presented indoors and outdoors, in a place near you or a pinprick on a foreign map, from submerging basement bedrooms to blistering terraces, always affable, agreeably argumentative, brimming with saintly tolerance for all but the most gross blunders and their perpetrators and, in an eloquent closing nutshell, impartially appreciative.

How does he do it?

Well, he's faking it.

In direct proportion to the featured-owner-idiocy-index KMac assumes the temperament of the reasonable man. As their naivety / arrogance / imprudence / crassness increases so does KMac's professional balance and just assessment. But look past his mild qualms as expressed to the camera: underneath he's boiling.

You see, if it appears too good to be true, chances are it is too good to be true. The normal mortal can't stand being so nice and fair for so long. KMac really wants to tell them what wastes of space they are, whilst texting for the urgent on-site presence of the nearest demolition contractor.

For instance, take these twits (the bloke really) hell bent on converting an innocent ruined church in the far reaches of Ireland.

The Great Architect - in jocular mood (rare, early photo)

What a super home it will make, he intones, with all the pomposity of the born-again architect - you know the sort, doggedly defiant in the face of his portfolio of past excrescences now regrettably gracing the built environment. Trouble is, he was an architect.

God help the little church.

And so it began, the usual building saga. Sir Kevin was very positive, so positive it just had to mask his growing loathing. I began to feel sorry for the twit's wife, trivialised and marginalised by her Great Inspiration-struck Master.

'It seems too small' she pleaded. 'Nonsense' he condescended, 'look at that height, three storeys of it'. What was she supposed to do? Cook and serve meals vertically?

Cut and diced, the poor structure blossomed into a pastiche of design mediocrity.

I just know Sir Kevin itched to scream:

• this is a nasty warren of rooms for underdeveloped pygmies;
• with bathrooms thoughtfully two floors distant from bedrooms;
• linked by bland slabs of white plaster of silo-like appeal;
• featuring a tower retreat making a subdivided phone box look spacious;
• cleverly permitting a woman to up-skill to gymnast-chef;
• courageously unheedful of imminent hospitalising incidents guaranteed in traversing the precipitous two level sitting room (itself a triumph of miniaturisation); 
• embellished with rails and balusters fresh from a failed Woodwork 1 class project;
• the kitchen a forest of timber supports further encouraging the cook-if-you-dare principle;
• and about as airy and welcoming as a morgue.

Yes, I PLANNED this.

But did he give his real feelings away? Not one bit. He's too polite for that. He's too generous to mention  the assault on his own proven design sensibilities. Anyway, how many hopefuls would entrust their dreams to a presenter who told the truth?

He's trapped, poor man.

Mercifully, there are two confidants to whom KM can lay his soul bare - his good wife, who is wisely keeping schtum, and your tireless correspondent, who labours in the service of his reader.

This Christmas I fully expect to receive a complimentary copy of Lord McCloud's 33rd series of Grand Designs.

Life, the Universe and the Why of Blogging

Your Tireless Correspondent - photo Roman Bonnefoy

WHY? Why am I doing this?

A fair enough question – picture its relevance when attached to 100 metres of rubber with only a teenage bungy master’s breezy assurance that ‘nobody’s died yet’; when sitting the practical examination in Crocodile Wrangling 1; when agreeing to judge Best Bikie Gang tattoo.

Surely, the sedentary sport of blogging is harmless enough: a few words on a page, a generous scattering of wisdom, the odd bon mot, not to forget a splash of paint stripper on the richly deserving. Easy.

Well, here’s the news. YOU MUST BE DREAMING.

Easy is volunteering as a crash test dummy; easy is standing naked in the men's locker room; easy is your first speech for election to office.

I’ve been told that some people would rather lose a digit than speak in public and it seems to me that blogging is a bit like that:  full of terrors. Think of the exposure, the humiliation, the ridicule awaiting your every post, your trivial thoughts, your juvenile analysis, your pitiful expectations, in fact, your entire life and work. And it’s so public. Better to just curl up and die.

So, in a tiresome repetition of the question, why blog? Obviously it’s an experiment, or possibly a dare, maybe my half of a diabolical bargain. Rubbish. Clearly it’s the lesser of many unappetising evils and anyway, I might be in the power of a higher authority, a guiding light pointing the way to redemption via blogging. No?

I can dodge and weave no longer, dear suffering reader (if there be such a paragon in the vast halls of blogdom). It’s ‘fess-up time.

I am, in fact, the victim of simple and brutal blackmail. Blog or I’ll fail you. That’s pretty much the short-short version. In my innocence I signed up to do a perfectly amiable course in media stuff only to be ambushed by this smiling fiend.

He ordered me to tell you things - if I lie I’ll be punished.

I’m interested in too much about which I know little and too little about which I know much.

Apart from that, it’s the (here we go again):

• writing-authors-books bit;
• the my-riveting-travels bit;
• the politics-in-minute-doses bit;
• the history-especially-maligned-warfare bit;
• the quirky-tangential-scatological bit;
• the how-do-I-know-until-I-trip-over-it bit;
• and the directionless-life-full-of-events-I-don’t-understand bit.

Somehow I think that most of it will be the last two bits.

Thrilling. Where will it lead? Who cares?

Like creative hopefuls everywhere, staring at the stage 1 mess they’ve just produced, I describe my efforts as ‘a work in progress’ and pray to the elusive gods that something worthwhile (maybe even readers) will emerge from my labours.

But what if there’s no-one out there? Tell me I’m not alone.

Annual gathering of my enthusiastic followers