Lots of my Room To Improve clients are now firm friends
TV architect says close bonds are inevitable as he meets people for a vulnerable year in their lives
DERMOT Bannon’s Christmas card list is half made up of families who have appeared on Room To Improve, the TV architect jokingly admitted this week In proof that his onscreen bonhomie is not just for the cameras, the presenter told the Irish Mail on Sunday he has maintained ‘loads of’ friendships from the show’s 14-year run and regularly goes sea swimming with some former clients.
Dermot and quantity surveyor Claire Irwin return for a new series of the hit show tonight.
‘I was doing Christmas cards just before Christmas and I realised we were sending half of them to old Room To Improve clients,’ Mr Bannon told the MoS. ‘I tend to spend a year in people’s lives
When the show goes on I get a huge surge of texts wishing me luck
and I get to see them at their most stressed and their most vulnerable, so you get to see the real people. You get to really know people and I’ve met some wonderful people through it.’
The architect said he meets up with one particular couple from a memorable 2015 episode ‘all the time’.
In the episode, Mr Bannon and the team transformed the home of Ann and Barry Higgins in Malahide, Co. Dublin, to make it accessible for their wheelchair-bound foster son, Micheal Stokes.
Tragically, Michael died in 2018 aged just 15. ‘Michael unfortunately passed away and Ann, to help cope with her grief, started sea swimming and I go swimming with her,’ Mr Bannon said.
‘And we went for our Christmas Day swim, we went for a Stephen’s Day swim. We’re in a little group now that go sea swimming together and that was all through Room To Improve.’
The Malahide native said there have been ‘very, very few [clients] over the years that I haven’t gotten on with’ and said some remain ‘close friends’.
‘Some I don’t see as often as I should, as I could, as I’d want to. But a lot of them I’m incredibly fond of and we would send texts. When the show goes out on air I get huge swathes of texts from old clients wishing me luck and “Can’t wait to see the new series”.’
The urban planning aficionado also said if he were made Housing Minister tomorrow, he would ‘look at every bloody block of land we have in this country’ and would ‘overlook’ land ownership rights. ‘All I hear when it comes to budgets is surpluses, surpluses, surpluses. There’s a whole generation who feel completely locked out of owning their own home and having a safe roof over their head, and that would be the first thing that I would tackle.
‘I’d take the country and towns and cities and I’d overlook land ownership rights. I would just say, “Right, where’s the right place to build houses? Where’s got the right facilities? Where’s got the right infrastructure? Where can people have a really good quality of life – ie not spend hours commuting? Where’s got enough schools? Where’s got enough road networks? Where’s got shops?”
‘And I would start building infrastructure. I’d start building communities. I would start building smaller communities and really focus on where we’re building and what can we do here?
‘Just building housing estate upon housing estate on the roads out of Dublin is not the solution. We need
We need to start building places where people will enjoy living
to start building places where people will enjoy living.’
The 51-year-old is a big advocate for the renovation of vacant properties, but said he doesn’t know if ‘using whole swathes’ of vacant accommodation for emergency accommodation is ‘the right thing to do’ – without consideration of what amenities are nearby to encourage community development.
‘There’s two massive wars going on not far from us and we have to mind those people,’ he said. ‘We’re lucky here that we’re not living in those horrendous circumstances and I think we need to mind our neighbours and our neighbours might not be people from the next village or town – they might be from another country.
‘But in saying that, I do think the Government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to urban planning. And I do think that just taking whole streets and whole areas as emergency accommodation is not serving anybody.’
Mr Bannon continued that those committing arson attacks on emergency accommodation are ‘misrepresenting’ Irish people.
‘Sometimes people do feel that their towns and villages are being overlooked when it comes to investment and facilities, and there’s an anger there. But I do think a lot of that anger is from the far-right, and I don’t think it’s the general population.
‘Some people are just angry, and that’s because of deeper issues. I don’t believe that if something was burned down it was because people in that local community really felt that they didn’t want to have emergency accommodation there – I think it’s the far-right. And I don’t believe that’s the Ireland I live in.’
Some people are just angry and that’s because of deeper issues
Political opinions aside, Mr Bannon said he has no interest in a career change.
‘I think if you go into politics, people seem to move from portfolio to portfolio which kind of irritates me,’ he said. ‘Nobody ever really becomes an expert in it. They end up going from one portfolio to another and just trying to hang on to their jobs.’
The presenter said he had texted his former RTÉ colleague Ryan Tubridy to wish him luck in his new job on Virgin Radio in the UK.
‘I felt sorry for Ryan,’ Mr Bannon said. ‘I know that’s probably not a popular attitude, but as a human being. I know his passion was in RTÉ. I don’t know Ryan that well, but I would know him to have a chat with and I’ve been out for a pint with him and I just know how much RTÉ meant to him.
‘Honestly, I think he just got burnt out doing the Late Late Show so he just wanted a change. But I think his real passion was always Irish people, Irish lives, Irish radio, and I felt sorry for him at the time… to publicly lose his job like that.
‘He’s a good guy underneath it all. There’s no malice in him and I think he got caught in the middle of the crossfire.’