Show gives design duo a career makeover
THEY were the interior design duo who found TV fame in the Noughties with How Not to Decorate.
Now Scots couple Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan are back on our screens with a new show made in Canada, where they have hit the big time.
Great Escapes, which debuts on BBC Scotland tonight, shows the design twosome visiting stunning houses across Canada, including one made entirely from glass and another from hay bales.
And the pair, who are currently on lockdown in northern Ontario where they have a home, say they would like to do a similar show in Scotland. Mr McAllister said: ‘There’s a great movement in Scotland of people taking over abandoned buildings, churches and such like.
‘They take these rural properties and turn them into amazing homes. We’d love to do a show that captured some of that.’
Mr McAllister, 53, and Mr Ryan, 54, first moved to Canada in 2009 and have since become major TV stars with a string of successful property shows on Canadian television, and a stint as design experts on a morning TV show.
Mr McAllister added: ‘We’ve been out here for a long time now and we’ve done all manner of TV shows, so having this show back on the BBC feels like a bit of the continuation of the journey for us.
‘It’s been 20 years since we were first on the BBC, so this is a bit like a postcard from Colin and Justin back to Scotland.’
The pair have a home in Glasgow which they usually return to every four weeks, but thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic they have now been stuck in Canada, in a lake house in the Halliburton Highlands, near Toronto, for the past four months.
Mr Ryan said: ‘The advice was to buckle down, so we’ve been here ever since. It’s been a great place to be locked away.’