A supersize home truth
WHAT exactly is the aim, I wonder, of
BUILDING BRITAIN’S SUPERHOMES
(Channel 4, 10pm)? I’m guessing this show wants to make us pea-green sick with envy, seeing the kind of swanky property on which wealthy folk splash their not necessarily hard-earned cash.
Bearing in mind which channel it’s on, perhaps it even hopes to spark a revolution, to have us rioting in the streets, dusting off the guillotines, looting TK Maxx and that kind of nonsense.
Let’s face it, those Channel 4 chaps do love to stir things up. But if that really is this programme’s true goal, I’m afraid it’s fallen short by some distance.
The luxurious house-building project it’s following, a vast new hillside home on a private estate in Nottingham, is remarkable, I can’t deny.And its mastermind, “uberluxury property developer” Guy Phoenix (great name, by the way), is the sort of real-life, self-taught, down-to-earth sweary geezer that modern-day telly loves.
Guy, we’ve been told, “pretty much got kicked out of school” and has no qualifications in architecture, design or anything you might expect to find on an uber-luxury property developer’s CV. So, yep, his success is genuinely impressive. Good for him.
But I genuinely wouldn’t want to live in the sort of “**** ing fabulous house” (his words, not mine) he’s building here.
Or at least I’ve convinced myself I wouldn’t. Obviously, I’d like enough money to have it as an option, but that’s not the same thing. If I were that rich, I’d rather buy something that would make me happy and fulfilled, such as Harry Kane. I’d prop him in the corner of my hallway for guests to hang their coats on.
The thing I’ve decided I’d find most off-putting about these superhomes, perhaps weirdly, is their size.
That’s not to say I’d prefer one of those pint-sized places we see on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, where some genius has built, say, a bungalow in a bucket.
I’m just saying there comes a point where a house loses its essential cosiness.
Without cosiness, a home just isn’t a home, as I believe a wise man once said, although it may have just been me.
Elsewhere, in GREAT BRITISH MENU (BBC2, 8pm), the three remaining South-West chefs are about to be whittled down to two. So naturally they’re all desperate to wow the judges.
With this in mind, one of them is even making a venison wellington in the shape of a crocodile. It does look impressive, I have to say, to the point where I’m even thinking of making my own at home.
Of course, mine would be a much easier version, where I’d simply buy a crocodile and wrap it in puff pastry.