Dermot Bannon’s new TV show meant he ‘had to learn how to listen for the first time’

The celebrity architect and TV presenter Dermot Bannon is back on our screens for a new interiors series, but it’s very different from Room To Improve

Dermot Bannon(Image: Evan Doherty)

Television presenter Dermot Bannon has admitted that his new show Celebrity Super Spaces pushed him outside of his “comfort zone” as he “had to learn how to listen for the first time”.

The new series, which lands on RTE One tomorrow night (Sunday, April 26), sees Dermot step inside the homes of well-known celebrities including podcaster and TV star Vogue Williams, comedian Joanne McNally, actor Aidan Gillen, chef Clodagh McKenna and rugby star Andrew Porter.

But despite being on our TV screens for nearly two decades now as the host of fan favourite Room To Improve as well as Super Spaces and Incredible Homes, Dermot says this show “is better” because he has people “to bounce off”.

He told Chic , “I think (this show) is better, and the reason I think it’s better is for one reason only – normally when I do Super Spaces I’m walking around a place by myself or I’m chatting to the audience going, ‘oh my god, look at this, this is cool’, which I love doing, but it was really nice to have someone to bounce off in this.

“These programmes are about the people as much as it is about their homes whereas before it was very much just about the home.

“In this, it’s, you’ve designed something different, why?, and I get them to explain it. And all the spaces are unusual. All these celebrities have something quirky or unusual that kind of define who they are so it was really interesting just to have them to bounce off.

“For example, Andrew Porter, the biggest surprise for him, as a young rugby player – international rugby player, all the money in the world – is his favourite space in his house is a workshop. He built a workshop that is good for his mental health. He lost his mum when he was young and he finds the pressure of rugby sometimes gets to him so he has this workshop.

“So it’s about discovering things about celebrities that you wouldn’t have known before through their houses.”

“Camille O’Sullivan and Aidan Gillen, the house is really super cool but different, some would call it odd, I call it refreshing.

“Maybe that’s a theme that runs through a lot of these houses – a lot of us follow trends or do things that we see on Instagram or might see in Image magazine – but celebs aren’t afraid to do their own thing because a lot of them are creative, a lot of them are artists in their own field, so they weren’t afraid to be experimental. Whether it worked, that’s another thing. That’s where I offered my opinion.

“But in most cases their house was an extension of who they are, especially with someone like Joanne McNally. The house is as bonkers as she is – in a really, really good way.

“She has an air fryer… but she keeps her keys in it!

“I never really knew Joanne but I fell in love with her instantly. I just loved her and the vibrancy and personality of her house was just amazing. I get why everyone wants to go see her, she’s that good!”

As an architect, Dermot is no stranger to giving his professional advice when it comes to home renovations and interiors and on Room To Improve he sometimes clashes with families who don’t always agree with his advice.

In Celebrity Super Spaces, he says he had to park his judgments to one side to really get to know the stars and the reasoning behind their decisions.

“There’s things that I found unusual and didn’t like and I did say it but there’s ways of saying it – like, ‘I wouldn’t make that decisions but I get why you did it’. So I didn’t shirk away from it but the job here was to understand them through their house.

“So while it’s hard not to be judgmental, the job was to find out why they did things. And if you overlay that with too much judgment, you miss the point. So you have to park the judgment – and I’m not great doing that so it was probably written all over my face – but I was trying to become a different type of presenter where I had to listen for the first time.

“In Room To Improve, I do a lot of the talking so in this I had to learn how to listen and get them and understand them through their house and I loved doing that but it pushed me outside of my comfort zone a little bit.”

Vogue Williams and her husband Spencer Matthews own a beautiful home in Howth in Dublin but the couple also recently bought a new home in London which they are currently renovating.

So did they ask Dermot for his advice?

“(Vogue) didn’t… but Spencer did. So I gave them advice on their bathroom – they’ve a huge bathroom at the front of their house. So he asked me about the bedroom and bathroom situation upstairs and I helped them out with that but they will probably do their own thing anyway!

“When I get into queues in IKEA or Woodie’s or somewhere like that, or if you’re buying furniture, I’d get a lot of people following me around, going, well which couch does he like, follow him, follow him, especially when filming.

“Then we’ll leave that area of the shop and you’ll see them go up and test the couch!

“Or I’d get people stopping me and asking, ‘look, we’ve a room this size, what do you think?’, and off the top of my head, I’ll tell them.

“But most of the time people just want me to tell them what they did is good. And sometimes, if they’ve finished the project and it’s all done and they’re happy but I can see a mistake, I don’t tell them because there’s no point. They’re really proud of it and I get that.”

As for his favourite home that he visited during filming for the new show, Dermot adds, “They were all really different and I know that sounds really diplomatic.

“I really enjoyed Camille and Aidan’s house because Camille is an architect as well as a singer so it’s really architectural but really quirky at the same time. There’s a really cool room in the middle of the house that there’s no furniture in whatsoever, it’s just for what you want it to be.

“So you can sit on the floor. I went in and she said, ‘what do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I dunno, I kind of feel like I want to go to the window’ and she said, ‘well go to the window’. You know, it was odd but it was challenging.

“With say Don Mescall’s house, his house is full of triggers for songwriting so there’s objects around the house that he would go and look at and it would trigger him and help him with songs.

“All stuff that was really unusual.

“Clodagh McKenna’s house has this amazing wisteria dining room, it’s like something from Harry Potter, so there’s loads of interesting stuff that I would never have designed or done before or even thought of and that was what was really cool.”

We’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis which shows no signs of abating, with house prices and the cost of building materials rising significantly over the last number of years.

When Chic chatted to Dermot he was at a conference and was asked by an attendee if they should go ahead with a house build.

He told us, “Someone asked me if they should go ahead with the build and I said, ‘look, to be honest, the only way prices are going to come down significantly is if there is a massive recession’.

“The only time I really saw prices adjusting downwards was after the big crash in 2008 – and nobody wants that.

“So sometimes what happens is building prices might slow down or they might level, they never really go down, and with that, inflation goes with it so I think if you can afford it, just do it now.

“I don’t know if things are going to get any worse because it’s all up in the air – we have someone in America who is dictating how the whole world is.

“And I don’t know if we have felt the effects at all in the market with regards to what’s happening – and hopefully we won’t – but this is a world economics thing and I suppose I’m not an expert on that.”

Dermot has three children – the oldest of whom is 21 – who he hopes will all go on to own their own homes one day. But, as a parent, he says he is very aware that this may not be possible for a whole generation of young adults.

“We get a lot of it in Room To Improve, especially this year, a lot of parents in their late 40s/early 50s, they’ve got teenage kids or kids in their 20s and they say, ‘they’ll be living with us for ages so we have to make sure that we can have four adults or five adults in this house’ and there’s a real sense out there that there won’t be anywhere for them to live.

“And with my own kids I’m trying not to think of it because they have to try and make their own way in the world and do what they do but I do worry. But it is what it is so there’s no point worrying about it, it won’t change anything.

“I think we just adapt to situations but my daughter will be looking for a house in four or five years – she’s in third year in college at the moment, on an Erasmus in Sydney – but it’s something that is there, what is she going to do? What are the younger generation going to do? How will they ever afford a home? How will they even afford to rent a home and move out of home?

“It’s something that does bother me. It’s not that I want them out from under me, at all, I really enjoy having my kids here, but it’s for them.”

While Dermot is excited for Celebrity Super Spaces to air, there is another project he would love to work on in the future.

“Dublin city has a lot of architectural issues with regards to how the city is and how desirable the city is and I think other cities, for lots of different reasons… they do things a lot better than we do and I would love to explore that and kind of bring lessons back.

“Room To Improve does it for the house, I’d love to do it for a city and maybe learn a little bit from that.

“We have a small population, we have lots of land so it wouldn’t be hard to get Dublin and Cork and Galway working right so I’d love to do something like that.”

Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces airs tomorrow, April 26, at 9.30pm on RTE One and RTE Player.

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