grand
Yet again the phrase, 'I can't believe I didn't blog about this' passes through my fingertips onto the keyboard. Actually, more accurately, 'I can't believe it's taken me nigh on a fortnight to blog about this'; We went to see Grand Designs Live.
Grand Designs is a long-running TV series about people who design and build their own houses. Each hour-long episode follows one house over the months or years it takes from design to completion. Its host, Kevin McCloud, makes site visits throughout filming, adding unnecessary tension (usually along the lines of, 'will it all go horribly wrong?') just before each ad break.
But this was Grand Designs Live.
We got (free) audience tickets after we heard that this live show was going to be about Kevin's attempt to build a house in one week. It was on for an hour every night for a six nights in a row and, because we had no Sky signal, we hadn't seen Sunday, Monday or Tuesday's programmes before going to Wednesday's show, so had no idea what to expect.
It was a bit of an anticlimax; it ended up being more about how much money they could get people to part with via pointless phone voting for 'best eco house' or 'best redesign' and less about the house. In fact, I'd be very much surprised if they spent even a quarter of the show focussing on the building progress or broadcasting 'live' - the pre-recorded clips for the phone vote took up at least half an hour. This was the show's major failing - a huge missed opportunity.
We were gutted to discover that Heston would have been there if we'd gone on Thursday evening instead of Wednesday. Husband was saying he could have given Heston a bit of advice about making a few shortcuts on the Chicken Tikka Masala recipe ;-)
Anyhow I got on telly, see*:
You can just see my head poking up from behind that massive bloke.
* We only got to see ourselves on telly via the crappy, overly complicated 4OD. The BBC iPlayer is much better.
Grand Designs is a long-running TV series about people who design and build their own houses. Each hour-long episode follows one house over the months or years it takes from design to completion. Its host, Kevin McCloud, makes site visits throughout filming, adding unnecessary tension (usually along the lines of, 'will it all go horribly wrong?') just before each ad break.
But this was Grand Designs Live.
We got (free) audience tickets after we heard that this live show was going to be about Kevin's attempt to build a house in one week. It was on for an hour every night for a six nights in a row and, because we had no Sky signal, we hadn't seen Sunday, Monday or Tuesday's programmes before going to Wednesday's show, so had no idea what to expect.
It was a bit of an anticlimax; it ended up being more about how much money they could get people to part with via pointless phone voting for 'best eco house' or 'best redesign' and less about the house. In fact, I'd be very much surprised if they spent even a quarter of the show focussing on the building progress or broadcasting 'live' - the pre-recorded clips for the phone vote took up at least half an hour. This was the show's major failing - a huge missed opportunity.
We were gutted to discover that Heston would have been there if we'd gone on Thursday evening instead of Wednesday. Husband was saying he could have given Heston a bit of advice about making a few shortcuts on the Chicken Tikka Masala recipe ;-)
Anyhow I got on telly, see*:
You can just see my head poking up from behind that massive bloke.
* We only got to see ourselves on telly via the crappy, overly complicated 4OD. The BBC iPlayer is much better.
I love Grand Designs and Kevin McCloud. It was a surprise hit for the ABC so they started showing old episodes (1999?) and Kevin was very young! I love the episodes where the owners have more money than sense and create some monstrosity that ususally makes me think 'who's going to clean those windows/glass stairs/the fifth bathroom??'.
Posted by:Carolyn | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 07:33 AM
I had to see Kevin in all his fine glory and clicked through the picture. Just the side of his head. Damn...
Posted by:Carolyn | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 07:35 AM
And I've seen him 'in the flesh', so to speak - you may be disappointed to hear there was very little of it exposed ;-)
Posted by:Kirsty | Saturday, 24 May 2008 at 09:36 AM