Dermot Bannon loathes the term ‘property porn’.
“I see it as derogatory,” he says when asked how he feels when people bandy the label around his hugely successful home improvement show.
Why does it get his goat? “Maybe ask a chef how they feel when someone uses the term ‘food porn’,” he replies. Although he admits that – as a nation – “we are still obsessed with housebuilding and get tingly when we think about it”, he says he hates to see people treat homes as “objects of desire”. Because – for Bannon – it’s not about the big spend or the swanky interior labels, but what a home does for the people who live there, or how it can fit a person like a good “tailor-made suit”.
It’s probably why tonight’s show – which sees the celebrity architect finally build his own dream home – is the most anticipated Room to Improve to date.
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People want to know what the presenter is like when he lets himself run riot. So fans may be surprised to discover that Bannon’s luxury item is an intimate experience in his back garden. “I started to think what I would really, really love,” he says. “And I love sea swimming and I love the hot and the cold so we have put a bath outside the house. We took the cast-iron bath from the house and put it down at the end of the garden.”
In the coming days – once he shifts a winter cold – he says: “I cannot wait to fill it with hot water on a freezing cold night.
“A huge treat for me is to go sea swimming. I come out of it feeling like I have been 10 days in a spa. There is something about the temperature change and going from hot to cold that I thought ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if I could do something like that at home?’ It’s like a walk in the park. I asked myself how I could build a walk in the park into my home.”
Is it private enough? “It is really private.”
And does it fit two? He laughs: “It’s an old bath, from 1930s Ireland.”
So… does it fit two? “It does,” he laughs again. “Actually it fitted myself and Diarmuid Gavin in it at one stage.”
Describing how it will stave off the Irish elements, Bannon says: “We have built a little shack and its sits underneath a ledge.”
Can I call it a ‘love shack’? “No, you can’t,” he baulks. “I will be well read out of it [by my wife] if that happens.”
- Read More: The stress factor: Bannon feels the pain as he redesigns his family’s new home
The two-part programme sees Bannon tripling his Drumcondra home in size as he builds a two-storey ‘wrap-around’ extension and threatens to spend up to €650,000 on the dream build.
So what about the private clients he works for – what are their desires in the post- boom years? “Here are a couple of things that have crept in,” he says. “I haven’t been asked not to put in a walk-in wardrobe for a long time. Everybody has a walk-in wardrobe. I have been asked for ‘his and hers’ walk-in wardrobes too and then you get the competition for size – who needs the biggest one.
“The big utility room and walk-in pantries are also big trends now.”
On other treats, he says: “I have been in meetings where people forget how many en-suites they have.”
You may not be able to call it property porn within earshot of Bannon, but it seems, even in the post- Celtic Tiger years, some people are indulging a little more than others.
The first part of ‘Room to Improve: Dermot’s Home’ airs tonight on RTE One at 9.30pm
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