Dermot Bannon: Often I wonder, ‘what is all the fuss about?’ It’s just me doing my job

“I often feel so jealous of Kevin McCloud – his one-liners and his pieces to camera are so amazing. Everything I say to camera is responding to what happens a second ago"

Sun, 08 Jan, 2023 - 18:02

Ed Power

Ireland’s most famous architect is explaining why he’s a “bumbling idiot”.

“I had no media experience. I still don’t have. I was working in an architectural practice right until 2008,” says Room To Improve presenter Dermot Bannon.

“Even during the first couple of seasons of Room To Improve, I was working in full-time jobs. I think that’s a little of the charm of Room To Improve. I’m a bit of a bumbling idiot on TV.”

He watches other home improvement shows – such as Grand Designs, presented by Kevin McCloud – and marvels at the slickness of it all.

“I often feel so jealous of Kevin McCloud – his one-liners and his pieces to camera are so amazing. Everything I say to camera is responding to what happens a second ago.

"I sometimes watch back and think, ‘oh my God, my English is brutal there, you’re not explaining yourself’. I’m very self-critical. When you compare to other shows, they’re much slicker."

But, as he says, therein lies the charm. Room To Improve returns in January for a 14th season and with the formula more or less unchanged from when it made its debut in 2008. Audiences wouldn’t have it any other way. Bannon, for his part, tries not to think too deeply about what makes the series work.

“It crept up on me very slowly,” says Bannon, on the move around Dublin as he speaks to the Irish Examiner.

“I’ve been doing Room To Improve now for 15 years. For the first five years it was a bit of a slow burner. Then, when it became an hour long, it had room to breathe. And we brought in the quantity surveyor – that became another character. And we moved to a Sunday night.”

Of all things, it was the end of gangster drama Love/Hate that put a rocket under Room To Improve.

With that 9.30pm, Sunday slot vacated RTÉ gave Bannon a swish upgrade. Suddenly all eyes were on him. A phenomenon was born.

Room To Improve has remained a ratings blockbuster ever since: when it returned from a two-year Covid-hiatus last February, over half a million tuned in – over 100,000 ahead of The Late Late Show and Dancing With The Stars.

In Irish television, Room To Improve is the show to rule them all.

“We had big boots to fill. We were going in after the Love/Hate slot. We were all terrified and delighted. It’s been a slow thing. It’s not something I’ve noticed.

"I try not to think of it as a phenomenon. You wouldn’t go to work the next day.

Often I wonder, ‘what is all the fuss about?’ It’s just me doing my job.

"When you watch back, some of the conversations are just mundane things. The audience seem to love it.”

One of the quirks of Room To Improve is that, while the formula has remained the same, more or less, Ireland has changed starkly.

Bannon arrived on the airwaves as the Celtic Tiger was unravelling. In the decade since the country has negotiated booms, busts and pandemics. And now, the cost of living crisis.

“Things have been changing for the past four or five years. But they’ve changed pretty dramatically over the past couple of years, in particular,” says Bannon.

With so many households under financial pressure, it was decided Room To Improve should reflect that new reality, he says.

Dermot Bannon: I often feel so jealous of Kevin McCloud – his one-liners and his pieces to camera are so amazing.

“Some of the projects were started pre-pandemic, so we had them locked-in,” he says.

“It was a difficult one for us. We get lots of great applications. Sometimes we have people in a cool house overlooking the sea. They’ve got a nice big budget.

"You think, ‘wow this is heaven on a plate’. However, we made the conscious decision to go after the average house. We’ve taken a three-bed semi, which is what most people in the country live in. With a couple – one of them is working at home, and the other is a nurse.”

He describes them as “Mr and Mrs Ireland”.

“They are struggling with space, struggling with an average house having to become a home office, a family home. They’ve teenagers who are getting bigger. Storage problems, space problems...”

Bannon was born in Malahide in 1972. He studied architecture in Hull in the UK before moving back to Dublin where he joined the firm Moloney O’Beirne in Blackrock, whose work includes the brutalist Michael Tierney Building at UCD and the VIP lounge at Dublin airport.

He’d already had a taste of TV, having appeared as a student on Cilla Black’s Blind Date on ITV in 1994.

In 2006 he answered an advertisement seeking a presenter for a new series, to be called House Hunters. In 2008, he began to present Room To Improve.

Today, he lives in Drumcondra, Dublin, with his wife Louise and their three children, Sarah (17), James (13) and Tom (9). There are those who watch Room To Improve because they are genuinely interested in house design. But for many, the appeal has to do with the human stories behind the architecture.

“There have to be characters who will bring you on their journey. If they’re going to be guarded or they’re quiet or if they have no interest in telling their story – ‘I just want to be on Room To Improve’ – they probably aren’t going to be selected.

"We look for people who have a good story. They’re generally people you’d like to spend an hour with.”

In the best episodes, there’s a tension between Bannon’s vision and the practicalities of the project – as the clients see it.

There is the famous example, from 2018, of Bannon helping singer Daniel O’Donnell and his wife Majella remodel their home in Donegal.

In one priceless scene, the sky-rocketing cost of the project is revealed to O’Donnell, whose face turns simultaneously white and incandescent. He is having an out-of-body experience in real-time, in his kitchen.

“People can see themselves in both camps. They’re getting an insight into what I’m thinking. ‘Okay I get where he’s coming from – but I totally agree with the homeowner’.

"And then there’s this grey area in the middle where people start to believe that what I’m asking the homeowner to do is for me, for my ego. ‘A fancy architect. He wants to do that for himself. Don’t let him get his way’. Why would I do that? I’ve done 100 houses on Room To Improve. I don’t care – I’m doing this for you.

"When you get into the depths of all this you get into that grey area, ‘ah, he wants his own way – don’t give it to him’.” He does his best to talk people around. Ultimately, there is only so much even a superstar TV architect can do, however.

“I have modes of trying to persuade people. Right from showing them a drawing to bringing them somewhere similar. My last trick is, ‘okay guys – you know better, you do it’. I know when I’m fighting a losing battle.

"There is a line where you have to say, ‘right, I can do no more here’. If I haven’t left a stone unturned trying to persuade them, I can say, ‘right, there’s nothing I can do here, walk away’. When people don’t like things, I don’t take it personally. It is my job. It’s not a personal thing.”