IN NUMBERS: Grand Designs

An aviation-inspired house features in the fifth episode of the 13th series of Grand Designs (9pm, Ch4). Here, we look at some interesting facts and figures relating to the programme… 1999 The year the show made its debut. The very first programme featured a timber-frame kit house on a cliff top in East Sussex, and, as the show’s popularity grew, producers were receiving ten applications a day to appear on it.

18 The number of months it takes to make a single series, which normally comprises eight new episodes plus a few revisits; 200 hours are spent filming on location for each new programme. £28,000 The cost of one of presenter Kevin McCloud’s favourite builds (1), a cottage in Sussex made by woodsman Ben Law, shown in 2003. Kevin (2) cites Ben’s home as an inspiration for his own shed project, which he made in series one of Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home (series two is on Sunday, 8pm, Ch4). 4 The number of years after 3 it featured on the programme that a renovated barge (3) washed up on an Essex beach, in 2011; windows were broken, it had been tagged with graffiti and it had slipped free of its moorings. Unfinished at the time of filming, the barge fell into disrepair, and the owner said: ‘I have really lost heart to continue with it.’ 2 The number of foreign languages that Kevin speaks fluently. In the 2004 series Grand Designs Abroad, he often conversed in French and Italian (having studied the languages at Cambridge) – but claims his German is ‘grotesquely bad’.

2

1