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00:00Hello, and welcome to the newest and grandest podcast in the world. It's the Grand Designs
00:25podcast. I'm Greg James. This is Kevin MacLeod. Hello. Put it like that, Greg. It sounds really
00:30momentous. It is momentous. Yeah. We're going to dive into each episode of this new series,
00:37and I actually can't believe it's taken you 25 years to get around to doing a behind-the-scenes
00:42show. Finally, we're giving the people, and I include myself in that, what they want,
00:47because we want to know the goings-on of this show, which I think is one of the greatest TV
00:51shows ever made. Well, thank you. I am so excited and delighted that we're doing this together,
00:57because we've talked about it for so long. It's just lovely to be able to dig deep into the projects.
01:01So I wrote an article about my love for Grand Designs, particularly in the pandemic. I revisited,
01:06and me and my wife started the whole thing again as a comfort, and you saw the article,
01:12and then we were in the middle of lockdown, and it was a Friday night. I remember it vividly. I said
01:16to my wife, I'm just off to have a Zoom with Kevin MacLeod. She was cooking. She was cooking.
01:20We basically had a bottle of wine each. Yeah, we did. And we sat and chatted.
01:24And here we are. This is it. Didn't we follow through?
01:27Yeah. But we're going to focus, aren't we, week by week, on the episode we've just seen on television.
01:31Yeah, and also the big themes of the show. The stuff that people love the show for. The
01:36going over budget. The why are you doing this in the first place. The mad idea that someone
01:42wrote on the back of a matchbox. Great episode, by the way.
01:46The babies. The babies that people decided to have in the middle of a project, for goodness sakes.
01:49The conspiracy theories around that as well. Yeah, but let's not go there. Let's for another
01:53episode. Wow. We heard the music before this episode started. What does that music do to
01:58you? It's an amazing theme tune. It's in this lovely three, four time, you know, with a little
02:04bit of kind of imagination and a mystery about it. It always sounds like there's a quality of
02:08like, elves, run for the hills. It's got that kind of wonderful, magical, fairy tale-like quality
02:15to it, which is pretty. People have got married to it. I would. If I have another marriage,
02:20I'd do that. It would need 100% consent, obviously, from both of you. We'd need an
02:23officiator. Don't look at me. Oh, come on. Grand Designs is famous for having divorces.
02:27So Daisy Goodwin, who came up with the idea, she said it is a great programme, but it doesn't
02:31have a format. The only thing you know is at the end, it's either there's a finished house
02:35or there's a divorce. It's one or the other.
02:36Well, we're also going to focus on the episode we've just seen, and that features wonderful
02:42Sarah in the Durham Dales. We'll chat to Sarah a bit later. A really lovely character. I love
02:46this episode. It's a really lovely start to the series, and it looked cold.
02:50Yeah, she's 1,100 feet above sea level on an exposed moor. She grew up in the area, and
02:55she'd been working and living all her life in the South of England, working in the artistic
02:59community because she's an artist. And her kids grew up, and she went through a divorce,
03:02and she thought, actually, what do I do next in my life? And it was to move home, to go
03:07back to near where her mother lives. And she's chosen this kind of really windswept location
03:11in the most remotest of all villages, really. But I admire her for that because there's an
03:17artist, because it's always the artist that we turn to for regeneration. They're always
03:20the first people to move in somewhere and to build unusually, and this is what she's done.
03:24We'll dig into the big talking points of the episode shortly. But before we do, do you
03:28watch the show back when it goes out on telly?
03:30Yes.
03:30Because I think a lot of Grand Design's viewers will settle in and have snacks and drinks and
03:37have the whole evening planned. And I wanted to bring a bit of that to this podcast by having
03:41a drink pairing for each episode. And so what I've done is I've gone to a local brewery
03:46in Durham, and in here is a ruby ale from a local brewery.
03:51Nice.
03:51Because of the ruby red roof. So cheers.
03:54Clever you.
03:55Try a bit of that.
03:56Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is...
03:58It's quite nice, isn't it?
04:00I like a ruby ale.
04:02Cheers. It's also a hundred-year-old recipe as a nod to the original farmhouse that was
04:07on that lamp.
04:08Yeah, indeed. And that's worth mentioning, because by the time we got there...
04:12Oh, this is good.
04:12Isn't it?
04:13It's really good. When we got there, that original house had been already dismantled.
04:17Beautifully, of course, she was able to use all the stone from that in the new building,
04:20which was a nice reuse on site.
04:23I also wanted to just make a nod to the weather. And I got a little fan, but it's solar-powered.
04:30Are you hoping to mimic the effect of 80-mile-an-hour winds at 1,100 feet?
04:34Yeah. I think you wore your biggest ever gloves in this episode. They're ridiculous. They were
04:38like four times as I can.
04:39They were massive. They were in North Pole gloves.
04:41So I really enjoyed that you and her had the same flat cap on.
04:43We bonded over our flat cap choices, yeah. It's true.
04:46Should we dive in on the budget thing? Because as a viewer of Grand Designs, I always get
04:51halfway through, and I'm sure there are millions of other people that always go,
04:55do they not watch Grand Designs? They know the pitfalls. They know what's coming. Do they
05:00genuinely think it's not going to happen to them?
05:01They genuinely do think it's not going to happen to them. They do watch Grand Designs. It's just
05:04that they've never built before. And so there's a sort of an understanding in their mind that
05:08this will be the one project in the history of building which has come in on budget. This
05:12is the mentality which underwrote how much HS2 was going to cost. So on the counts of my three
05:18favorite variables, budget, time, quality, on all three. And I look at the project we film and
05:23think, well, okay, they overspent, but it's a beautiful thing. However, one thing I will
05:28say is when I ask people, how much are you tending to spend? What they're really quoting
05:32me is the figure of the money that they've got, not what it's going to cost. And I've
05:37done this. I employed a quantity surveyor to give me a price. And I looked at the price
05:41he quoted me, and I thought, I can't spend that kind of money. It's ridiculous. It won't
05:44be worse than when it's done. So I ignored it. And then I built, and then that's how much
05:49it did cost in the end. And there's a good argument for using quantity surveyors. And it's
05:53a very simple one. That is that if they weren't right, they wouldn't exist. And I reckon about
05:5810%, maybe 5% of our contributors, they do use quantity surveyors. And about 5 to 10%
06:04of projects come in on budget. And I suspect they're the same projects.
06:09So this one, Sarah wanted to spend 330, ended up spending 520 so far. So that's 190k over.
06:16That's 60% over. Even in the history of the show, that's quite an overspend.
06:19That's quite an overspend. But then she's got 180 square meters of usable space that
06:23she can live in and work in. My favorite figure is always to quote the cost per square meter.
06:28Right.
06:29Because, you know, we have this amazing metric in the UK, which is that we measure the
06:32value of a building by the number of bedrooms it has. It doesn't matter how big the bedrooms
06:35are or whether there are any bathrooms. There might not be a kitchen in the house. As long
06:39as it's got three bedrooms, it's going to be worth that. Oh, you could convert that broom
06:43cupboard into an extra bedroom, add another 25,000 to your house value. It's an absurd way of measuring
06:48quality of life and even measuring the contribution of architecture, right? So what they do in the
06:54rest of the world is either use a cost per square foot or a value per square meter. And it's
06:59really useful metric, I find. And looking at that, she ended up spending about 3000 pounds
07:04a square meter, which is these days quite cheap. I mean, before COVID, it was sort of bang on
07:10for quite high level self build, but now everything's gone up.
07:13So everything's gone up since COVID?
07:14Yeah.
07:14Why else has everything got more expensive? Why do people keep doing this?
07:18Labor's got a bit more expensive, partly because there are fewer people who are any good. And the
07:22whole market has not had any input of training for about 40, 45 years. So the big bulge of talented,
07:29trained people that came through, we got to COVID. And most of them said, Oh, I quite like this early
07:34retirement thing, I don't think I'm gonna go back. And so we lost a lot of skilled older people in their
07:3950s and 60s. And as a result, you know, good people, good plumbers, good electricians can
07:43sort of charge more because they're rare.
07:46This is the problem is because everyone watches Grand Designs and they go, Oh, I could do that.
07:50Then you get a load more people who do 60% over the budget. And this is the whole thing.
07:54That is true. Although I wouldn't say that the precondition of building or as a filming a building
07:58is that it has to go over budget. I love it when things come in on budget. I love it when the quality
08:02isn't compromised, because that's the thing we're really trying to champion is beautifully made things.
08:07And the money is always kind of entertaining. And it's a terrible thing, actually, when it goes
08:11really heavily over budget, because then that's all the story becomes about. And the lovely thing,
08:15I think, about the stories we tell is that they're multifaceted. There are lots of threads running
08:20at the same time. But you also have to be fully invested in these stories. And it must be quite
08:24difficult when you have to discuss the sad news or the difficult decisions and you're presiding over
08:30it. That's hard, isn't it, for you to do that? Yeah, of course. I mean, there's a team of us
08:34working on it. You know, everybody gets really invested in the projects. You can't help that.
08:38Throughout the episode, you are worried as the viewer that she's going to have to
08:42sell the holiday cottage and the money becomes a huge issue. And then there's that very moving
08:48scene in the caravan where not a hemp has been ordered. It all gets too much. And you understand
08:53that as a viewer, you think, I'd be crying at this point as well. How do you deal with moments like that?
08:58You know, that moment came about as an inevitability of not having enough cash in the
09:02first place and just praying and hoping that it would become good. And of course,
09:06things go wrong. That's life. These are people who don't have to be on television. We're not paying
09:12them to become television stars. This isn't some form of weird reality program. This is just life.
09:18And therefore, we want to tell a story which they will recognize as being their story. It's that
09:23simple, being honest. And there is a delicacy, therefore, and a subtlety that's required not to
09:29milk those moments because they're profound in their own right. They're not scripted and they're
09:35not set up. They are just caught. And it's an important part of the job, actually, is bringing
09:41humanity to the role rather than saying, oh, we're going to move on to the weather.
09:45Have you ever got to a point ever where you've thought, oh, Channel 4 High, can you send them
09:52some money because they're really struggling here?
09:54Once or twice, I have literally left sight in the evening to go and get a train thinking,
09:59they only need 10 grand. I wonder if I could. And of course, you wake up the next morning and
10:03think, if I'd thought that about every project that had gone over, well, I wouldn't be here.
10:07I'd be six feet under because you become emotionally involved and you want to help. And the best help
10:13I think I could possibly offer is here's a phone number of somebody you can ring or
10:17speak to those people who were in series 14 who did a similar thing. And that's the odd thing is
10:23that when I say that, they say, oh, yeah, yeah, we've done that. We're on the same Facebook group.
10:26They gave us the idea.
10:27And it's slightly odd when you've discovered that contributors have been speaking to each other.
10:32Well, that's good that you didn't give 10 grand because they'd have gone,
10:35oh, yeah, if you cry in front of Kev, he'll get his checkbook out.
10:38Just for the record, it won't ever be happening. Right.
10:42Shall we talk about hempcrete?
10:44We can.
10:45For those that haven't seen this episode, hemp plays a big role. Sarah uses hemp as one of the
10:52main materials.
10:53And it's important to say that the construction material is a form of cannabis sativa. That is,
10:57it's the same plant, identical to look at, but without the psychoactive ingredient.
11:01So you can't get high off a house.
11:02You can't get high off a house other than from the majesty of the architecture.
11:06Great. It's now a big part of my life, hemp.
11:08Yeah.
11:09Hemp clothes, hemp shoes.
11:10So my underwear is hemp.
11:11I wonder why you're scratching so much.
11:14No, it's super smooth. And I alternate between hemp and bamboo.
11:17And the interesting thing about that, I was thinking about this,
11:19is that bamboo is the fastest growing crop on the planet, right?
11:23Super sustainable, needs no input.
11:24Hemp is the second fastest growing crop on the planet, needs no input.
11:29So we really, in all seriousness, your underpants aside,
11:33we should be using hemp way more in our lives.
11:36Oh, yeah, yeah.
11:37Why are we not fast-forwarding this?
11:39Don't know.
11:40This feels sustainable.
11:41We could save so many forests.
11:42Maybe it's a little bit more expensive.
11:44Maybe it's because, not in France, but in the UK, we have a natural resistance to new products,
11:50new ideas. The idea that you could use something that's really sustainable and so simple.
11:56Surely there's something wrong with it.
11:59There's a slightly anti-diluvian preference for brick in this country.
12:02I also don't like the word hempcrete. I know concrete, I get where it's come from.
12:06Hempcrete.
12:07Because concrete is also an adjective. You know, you have discrete and concrete.
12:10It means, you know, something is solid.
12:12But I don't really know what else to call it, because it looks a bit like concrete,
12:15but it isn't. Much lighter.
12:16Call it hempcrete, then.
12:17Call it hempcrete. I'm sorry, Greg.
12:18No, no, no. I was watching it going on.
12:20That's just what we're calling it now, is it?
12:22I hadn't heard of hempcrete before this episode, but after watching it, that's all I think about.
12:28Hemp is a fantastically versatile plant. It grows straight and true like a big stalk.
12:34It's got fibres in it, which have been used for centuries for rope making and sail making.
12:38The world used to be made out of this stuff until plastics came along.
12:41And the stalks, which are often the waste product, somebody said, we could build with this.
12:46So the factory we visit is a state-of-the-art, modern, futuristic factory, which takes the stalk
12:51of the hemp plant and chops it up and then gets rid of all the dust.
12:55So it's very pure stalk, fibres, and they are mixed with a lime binder.
13:01Wow.
13:01And it's kind of a cool thing, because it's made out of very, very time-honored materials.
13:05And incredibly sustainable, like timber, so you can grow it again.
13:07Well, it takes three months to grow to about eight foot tall.
13:10It sequesters a huge amount of carbon, of course, on the way through from the atmosphere.
13:13And then you lock it away in the building.
13:15And you end up with a lightweight wall, which is structural and thick and insulating.
13:19And you can simply plaster it on the inside and render it on the outside.
13:22And you need to put nothing else into your wall, really.
13:25And that's sort of Sarah's approach.
13:26Hemp is being grown in the UK.
13:28Yeah.
13:29Why did you go to Champagne?
13:30Or is the answer obvious?
13:33Because I assumed, because you said, and we're in Champagne, look at hemp.
13:36I thought it was like Champagne, in that you can only call it hemp if it's from the French town Ope.
13:41It's got its own DOC on the bottom.
13:43Yeah, yeah. It's nothing to do with the Champagne thing.
13:45You can't call it Champagne unless it's from Champagne.
13:47You can call hemp from hemp wherever it's from.
13:49Yeah, indeed.
13:49So why did you go to Champagne?
13:50We went to Champagne because it's been grown there for centuries, continuously.
13:54And there used to be a big paper mill.
13:55We didn't get that far.
13:56We had a quick lunch.
13:57Okay, well, we believe you.
13:59The reason why the hemp had to come from Champagne was because in this factory,
14:04there's amazing dust extraction machines.
14:06The machines have giant springs that just wobble around to shake the dust out.
14:09And that makes for a much better hemp product.
14:12A much better drink, hemp.
14:14What I find interesting is you go to France, it's like loads of people build there,
14:17and they're growing it everywhere.
14:18And there are these amazing factories, right?
14:20In the UK, there's almost nothing.
14:22There's a historical reason for that, and that is we had a dangerous drugs act,
14:26which basically said no to growing anything like that.
14:30And even though it's not psycho, you'd have to smoke an entire field
14:33and you'd still have no effect, right?
14:35It seems absurd that you would ban.
14:37Have you checked that?
14:38I've tried.
14:40I haven't.
14:42Believe me, you'd have to smoke an entire field to get any effect.
14:45To get no effect.
14:47Kevin, I'm really enjoying this chat, but we are bound by adverts.
14:52In Grand Designs, it's a huge format point, isn't it?
14:55The jeopardy up to the ads.
14:57So give us some jeopardy so that people come back and watch the next bit of this.
15:01What's the sort of thing I would say?
15:02I don't know, something like, it was all going so well.
15:05It was all going so well.
15:06And then.
15:07And then.
15:09My favourite one was on Ben Law in about 2003.
15:12He built this beautiful house in the woods.
15:14Nothing went wrong with the project.
15:15And at one point, I found myself saying,
15:18the product's going well, Ben's got the frame up,
15:21but it's September and winter is coming.
15:25Maybe I'll say that every time.
15:27The podcast is going well, but it's October and winter is coming.
15:33I like your delivery.
15:34And so are the adverts.
15:36They're coming now.
15:37Yeah.
15:46Kevin, one of the things I'm very, very excited about getting to do the show with you
15:49is that I want to speak to the star of the latest episode.
15:53Sarah, yeah, we should call her up.
15:55And also, can I just say, I think it's stars because it's Sarah and her house,
16:00because it's the new entity.
16:02Well, Sarah and her house are about to pop up on the laptop in front of us.
16:07Hey, Sarah. Hi.
16:08Hello, Greg. And hi, Kevin.
16:10What a great episode, first of all. I absolutely loved it.
16:13I'm so pleased that your episode was the first of the series.
16:15That's a great honour. Do you realise the badge of honour that is?
16:18Yeah.
16:19No, I didn't know that was an honourable position.
16:21And I'm really pleased that this episode has gone out fast.
16:26For my first proper question, Sarah, with this unique access to you,
16:29is Kevin a good house guest?
16:31Oh, Kevin's a great house guest.
16:33He's an incredibly engaged person who is fascinated and very knowledgeable
16:40about build process and architecture.
16:42I'm just texting Sarah what to say.
16:44You say house guest, it's been a building site for so long,
16:50and then all of a sudden there is that transformative moment
16:52where you take your shoes off at the front door, you wipe your feet or you knock,
16:55you know, where you don't just walk in because it becomes somebody's home.
16:59And I think the relationship between building and art and people
17:02is a really interesting moment because, of course,
17:03the building happens because of a creative process.
17:05The building comes from people, but very specifically,
17:08this building is for creativity and it's for other people.
17:12It's a springboard idea.
17:13You've got to pour the energy into it and then it throws something back.
17:16I was wondering, Sarah, you know, has that already started to happen?
17:20Because you've been teaching, haven't you, in the space?
17:22Yes, I've kicked off the classes.
17:24Fortunately, I've got a very engaged group of people in the village
17:29who have really bought into expressive drawing, really.
17:32So that's fantastic.
17:34And I'm working towards, at the moment, having a public exhibition of the build drawings
17:41and inviting all of the trades who worked on the house to that evening,
17:46because that's the first time a lot of them have seen the finished build.
17:49You know, they did their bit, including the architects.
17:52So I think it'd be great to see all of those reactions from the people
17:58when they come here to the space, yeah.
18:00Has the new landscape and environment affected your art in any way?
18:06The field next door has got some fantastic young bullocks in.
18:10Actually, the farmer texted me and said he's got some real little characters
18:13that he's putting in there.
18:14Those young bullocks, they're brilliant to draw.
18:17As soon as they see me out there with the drawing board,
18:19they all come over and stick their heads over the wall.
18:22I love this. It's like people often move to the middle of nowhere
18:24and they worry about how they're going to integrate into community.
18:26And Sarah, of course, got to know the local farmers
18:28because it's a very agricultural rural area.
18:30And now you've got a Durham hill farmer texting Sarah
18:34to let her know when the interesting bullocks are coming,
18:36because he takes an interest in her art.
18:38There was lots of that in the episode,
18:40but I really was interested in the relationship that you had with David, the builder,
18:44who at the start of the episode was quite sniffy about hempcrete
18:49and said it would be the first and last building using hempcrete.
18:53Do you think that you changed his mind at all?
18:55Do you think that you managed to get him along your way of thinking a bit more?
18:59Oh, I don't know that. You'd have to ask David that.
19:02But David was actually key for my carrying on with the hempcrete,
19:05because there was a very tricky week where I was receiving conflicting advice
19:12about which hemp and which binder to use.
19:16I actually had started to consider hemp block.
19:19And then David turned up, actually, and he said,
19:21what, you're not doing the hempcrete?
19:22I thought the whole thing was about hempcrete.
19:25So funnily enough, I think it was actually David who was responsible,
19:29or certainly was a nudge to kind of carry on.
19:32I have one more thing, and we've had a lovely chat.
19:35I wanted just to check that if you had your time again with your grand design,
19:39would you get Kevin and the team involved again?
19:43Did you enjoy the process of your story being told on TV?
19:46Did you think that was a fun part of it?
19:48I really did. And in fact, I think it was a crucial element,
19:51because when I was thinking of applying, someone I knew said,
19:55for God's sake, don't do it.
19:57They said that the last thing you'll need when there's like,
20:00they're putting up the, you know, the timber frame comes on site,
20:02it's the stress of a TV crew. But actually having them around,
20:07they kind of like provided a support network.
20:10They were the only people, I would say, who were genuinely interested in the detail
20:14and the minute eye of, you know, how to crop a stone.
20:19My mum always said to me at the end of the day, oh, how's it gone?
20:24And I'd start to talk and she'd like disappear.
20:29That's lovely to hear.
20:30It defeats me why people are prepared to lead us into the lives, into one of the most stressful
20:35experiences you could ever inflict upon yourself, and then to add to it with the film crew.
20:40But I have to say, for us, it's a huge privilege. And we are always sensitive to that,
20:44because we feel that it is only thanks to the grace of people like Sarah that we're asked to
20:49come along and enjoy the ride with them.
20:51Sarah, thank you so much for being on episode one.
20:55And I wish you many, many happy years in your house. And I hope they're warm years,
21:00and I hope loads of people enjoy it and make wonderful art in there as well.
21:03Sarah, we'll come back again. We'll see you soon.
21:05And I'll try to persuade Greg up.
21:06I'm there.
21:07He's there.
21:07Yeah.
21:08See you then.
21:08Thank you very much, guys.
21:09Bye-bye.
21:10Kevin, we're almost out of time on this episode.
21:12Can't believe it.
21:13But I've been trawling the Grand Designs fan sites,
21:16and the joy of having a show that's been on for 25 years is there's so many questions,
21:19so many unanswered things.
21:21Okay.
21:21Claire from Chester says,
21:23have you ever come across someone whose unhinged idea actually turned out to be genius
21:28and worked far better than anyone could have imagined?
21:30Oh, yeah. There are plenty of those.
21:32Thank you for that question, Claire.
21:33The whole point about all of the people we film,
21:35it's like they've joined a cult, you know, their eyes glaze over.
21:38And it doesn't matter what I say or anybody says,
21:40they believe that this extraordinary idea is going to happen.
21:43And you might think that odd and a little bit unhinged,
21:46but actually nothing in the world would ever get built if people weren't like that.
21:51It's within all of us that.
21:52Let's have another one. How about this one from Eleanor in Hampshire?
21:56Kevin, do you always only wear blue slash navy? Is blue your TV colour?
22:01Of course I wear other colours. Just not today.
22:05Well, we've got variations on navy.
22:07Do you know what? I discovered a long time ago that if everything's the same colour,
22:11life's a little simpler.
22:12But you do like a nice colourful neckerchief.
22:14Occasionally.
22:14Yeah. Jazz it up.
22:16Yeah, but it's school uniform. That's what it is for me.
22:19And what about in real life? Do you wear your TV uniform in real life?
22:22Greg, this is real life.
22:24Wow.
22:25This is what we do.
22:26He's getting existential, guys. It's nearly time for a monologue.
22:29Thank you very much for listening and watching. And Kevin, it's been a joy. I can't wait for the
22:35rest of the series and we'll be there tracking every single move of these amazing builds.
22:40But I should add, as we are talking right now, we're still making the rest of the series.
22:44Really?
22:45Yeah, it's happening almost in real time.
22:47You better get going then.
22:47No, no, it doesn't stop.
22:49Kevin, thank you. We'll see you for the next episode. And we hope to see you on the next one too.
22:54Please make sure you're subscribing to this wonderful podcast, slash podcast, whatever you want to call it,
22:59and come back soon for more.
23:01Can I just say, you can access the entire archive of Grand Designs.
23:05That's 26 years worth on the Channel 4 website.
23:07And you can also access a selection of programs on YouTube.
23:11Meanwhile, we look forward to seeing you next week.
23:13There's a new episode of Grand Designs, of course, 9 o'clock Wednesday night, followed by this.
23:18What's not to like?
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