SIXTY SECONDS
THE PRESENTER AND INTERIOR DESIGNER, 55, ON EROTIC POEMS, SECRET PASSAGES AND HIS NEW YOUTUBE SHOW, SCHOOL OF FLOCK
School Of Flock sees you join the YouTube generation. Does that feel strange?
It does feel a bit weird when you think that Changing Rooms started 24 years ago and back then there was no such thing as social media. When I used to get fan mail it would be erotic poetry on notelets with woodland creatures on them, for goodness’ sake! The planet has definitely changed but one of the things we really wanted to do with School Of Flock was, despite the fact this is a contemporary medium, make it feel a little bit old-fashioned. There’s something quite nice about when cutting-edge technology ends up feeling quite retro.
The show is a great primer for anyone looking to learn more about interior
One of the great things about YouTube is that it just goes out into the ether – you don’t need to target with it. I wanted to do something . Gin gin! Laurence’s. . favourite tipple.
design. Did you have a target audience?
that felt like I’d just popped in for a glass of gin. There’s a lot of YouTube stuff that is one guy in a corner talking into his computer. We’ve gone out of our way to make something very lush because it’s sophisticated, sexy subject matter.
You make a grand entrance through a secret door in your bookcase – they’ve become quite the fashion statement.
People seem to instinctively want to put themselves in front of a bookcase whenever they’re being interviewed from home. Why not go and sit in the kitchen or the dining room or something? But no, everyone has to be at a desk with a bookcase in the background. I’ve got a lot of books and we film it in my main great room, which is all bookcases, and it was Dan’s [Laurence’s son-in-law] idea for me to emerge through the bookcase.
Where does it lead?
I put that bookcase door in when we first moved in because I’ve got to have somewhere to hide the gin store. There’s been a huge amount of speculation on social media about it. Some have suggested it leads to the Batcave while others say Narnia. Of course, most people are saying it’s to some kind of gimp room or pleasure garden. It’s just where we store our gin – one of the most important rooms in the house.
Everyone assumes it’s a secret door to a gimp room but it’s just where we store our gin
Has gin been an important fixture of your family’s lockdown?
Oh f***, yeah. It is so funny the way the sun has got over the yardarm earlier and earlier. We Brits have always had gin as the national drink anyway – forget tea! But we’re all looking at the gin bottle by about 3pm and thinking, ‘Should I? Is that too much? Really?’ One of my big triumphs early on was that we had decent tonic, which seemed to be something no one else did. I wasn’t worried about running out of loo paper but Indian tonic water, you’ve got to have that or you’d be drinking with squash – and that really wouldn’t do.
You’re dressed in your trademark outlandish suits. Do you think you’ll ever tone yourself down?
It is extraordinary, isn’t it? I loved that it was always panto, it was never
I’m going to be overdressed supposed to be a serious, to the grave, I can assure tasteful design show. you. Sometimes I might I remember being invited have a relatively quiet year to lecture for the National and everything will be quite Trust and you could see dark and be about the cut of Laurence. people were a bit resistant to the suit and the fit of the me. I said that you’ve got to
on Changing Rooms. suit. But then I get bored of it understand that Changing and go, ‘Nah, let’s make a suit out of the Rooms is an entertainment show, it’s curtains.’ In Australia, audiences are not a design show – if some good design simply impressed I can get away with sneaks in, then that’s great. Everyone a three-piece suit in that kind of heat. was always very relieved at that point. I love getting off a tiny plane in the I think they thought, ‘The last thing we middle of the Outback and being dressed need is Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen doing head to toe in shell pink. a concept album.’
You’ve worked in Australia on an interior design show called House Rules. Do you consider yourself an honorary Aussie?
I’d be very honoured if I was considered an Aussie. I’m astonished by how elegant Australia is. In the UK we get fed Neighbours and Home And Away but what we don’t get fed is the subtlety of its culture and the history. We think of Australia as a relatively young country but in Melbourne, Sydney and other cities you have Victorian churches and terraces, and there’s an enormous amount of depth there, much more so than America. And it all kind of happens under this ridiculously blue sky with crazy wildlife.
People still know you from Changing Rooms – you must be amazed at the show’s longevity.
Watch Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s School Of Flock on YouTube, with new episodes every Sunday