On the couch . . . with Aoibhinn McGinnity
Or how a famous TV architect very nearly lost the plot
“Dermot’s home!” said the wife last week. Surely not, I thought. Hasn’t he only just own back to America following the holidays? Of course she wasn’t talking about our recently departed friend; rather the new show from Ireland’s Most Famous Architect, Mister Dermot Bannon. Did you watch Dermot’s Home? Well every single person in Ireland apparently did, so I’m guessing you did too. A er all, it was a show that promised everything: comedy, tragedy, tension and Dermot going bananas.
Everyone loves Dermot B because he’s just like one of us. In other words, he wears his heart on his sleeve and his hard hat like his life depended on it, which in these health and safety conscious days, it does. He also sports a lopsided grin to match the hat and yes, he does look a bit like Ryan Tubridy (which is not really like all of us but just one person). Most famously, he would argue with a saint over matters of design. In Dermot’s Home, though, he mostly argued with himself.
Dermot, as we all know, is an architect who likes a bit of glass in his blueprints (and you know what they say about people in glass houses? Yes, that house was probably designed by Dermot Bannon). With Dermot’s Home he designed his own dream house. Following years of driving other people demented, Dermot was now driving himself mad. “I don’t know what I want,” said Dermot, as his projected budget wouldn’t build a rabbit hutch and the two-part series threatened to spill into a neverending soap opera.
As a kid, Dermot liked to play with LEGO. He especially liked the window pieces and one time famously constructed the entire Death Star out of windows. “When I grow up I want to be a LEGO Man,” said Dermot one day long, long ago as he set out his plans to conquer the world one brick at a time. It helped that he himself was constructed from these very same blocks, a veritable Mister LEGO with his LEGO arms and LEGO legs and an inability to let go of any crazy idea that doodled into his LEGO brain.
Very o en Dermot would be seen in a darkened corner of a skeletal building site, vigorously debating the size of a window. “LEGO!” says Dermot. I’m not letting go until you make your mind up, says the big burly man with the shiny yellow hat. Such is the life of the TV architect, forever at odds with the site foreman, the quantity surveyor and himself. So is Dermot’s Home the nal frontier for Room to Improve or is there still room to improve? Rumours that the next season will be entirely made out of LEGO have yet to be con rmed. Watch this (very large open-plan) space!