Interview: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, TV presenter

Published on Sunday 14 March 2010 10:31

Who would you invite to your fantasy dinner party?

It's a common question, and the usual suspects (Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde, George Clooney) tend to rear their pretty heads in most people's answers. At my fantasy dinner party, however, Lisa Simpson and Eddie Izzard are now having to budge up to make room for an extra guest: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

After spending the best part of an hour with him (and his "charmery" as he puts it) everyone's favourite telly dandy now sits at the head of my dream dinner table, topping up the Jacob's Creek and doling out the After Eights as he advises his fellow guests on how best to achieve maximum lustre in one's locks and get paint off leather trousers (wait until it's dry then scrape at it, apparently.)

Today the leather trousers are nowhere to be seen, but he is immaculately turned out in a three-piece Savile Row suit, starched shirt and camp-as-knickers blue tie that's taking on the three-dimensional properties of a cravat. He looks younger than his 45 years – handsome and trim with hair that bounces knowingly with every Carry On-esque double entendre that escapes his lips.

He's just finished the photoshoot for this interview, and I comment that he's a natural in front of the camera. Indeed it's not so much the camera that loves him but he who adores the company of the photographer's lens. "Oh I like Vogueing, me," he says, pursing his lips and flicking at his hair in a faux-affected manner as he takes a seat on a dark leather Chesterfield in a quiet corner of the smart London restaurant where we meet.

I soon learn that LLB, as he's affectionately known, takes nothing about himself particularly seriously. Indeed, he goes out of his way to be self-deprecating so as to ensure that from his ostentatious cufflinks to his amusingly plummy drawl, no one assumes that any aspect of his caricature of a persona is without a wash of calculated high-campery and a stippling of irony.

It would be premature to describe Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen as a national treasure, but he's on the waiting list thanks to his combination of flamboyant dandyism and old-fashioned end-of-the-pier humour. In short, he is utterly British; stipulation number one when it comes to achieving national treasure status. He is also excessively likeable. That's stipulation number two.

The happily married father-of-two first appeared on our screens in 1996 on Changing Rooms, wherein camera-friendly interior designers were given 48 hours and 500 to make over a couple's living room, without their input but with the help of their friends. All romantic cuffs, leather trousers and blow-dried hair back then, he has since forged a successful career in presenting, with programmes including the weekly BBC1 travel show Holiday under his belt. The blow-dried hair remains a staple.

He's just finished a stint as a judge on the ITV1 reality show Popstar to Opera Star, and is on the promotional trail to talk about his seventh book, a comprehensive interiors guide that teaches readers how to "aesthetically scent mark their living room."

Decorating With Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen explores 30 suitably colourful interiors all designed by the man himself, with DIY tips at the back on how to do everything from laying laminate flooring to drawing on your furniture with a gold pen to make it look like gold leaf. Only it's not quite DIY, he corrects me, but 'DILL'.

I am puzzled. "Do It Like Laurence," he explains. "I'm sure that there are a lot of DIY purists out there who will feel that I've rocked the foundations of their very nicely prepared, several-coated church on this one but these are the short cuts that I've found over the last 15 years of getting the effect very credibly without the slightly gnomish preparation techniques you'll get from a DIY manual."

In order to gain access to real houses for the book, he badgered friends, family and mothers at the school gates to get them to let him pull a Changing Rooms on one of their own rooms. "Basically I was just bullying people," he says matter-of-factly. "I went from one person to another. I'd just get on with it. And there were a couple of moments where they'd go 'oh I'm not sure...' and I'd say 'shut up, open a bottle of wine, it'll be fine'."

His no-nonsense, authoritative air has helped him turn his hand to a diverse range of interests in his television career. After all, what makes him enough of an authority on opera to sit on a panel alongside classical stars?

"I think broadcasters like to use me as a sort of a guide into other areas," he explains. "Because I'm very recognised people feel they know me very well and producers feel like they can put me on the panel of an opera show and people come with it, knowing that I don't have a specific axe to grind with that subject and I'm not a specialist so I'm not going to blind them with science. It will always be an amateur reaction to what's going on. Like their amateur reaction. But possibly mine will be a little more well-travelled than they are or add a little bit more experience. A little bit loucher. A little bit more Eurotrash. I'm like your naughty Uncle Monty who's been hanging round the galleries and the opera houses for far too long."

Decorating With Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is his first definitive interiors book, which is rather surprising since it's what he's primarily known for, but he's held off on it until now, citing in part the economic climate (in addition to the fact that "My children need shoes. From Prada. So please buy") as the reason it's come along now. After all, Changing Rooms was first broadcast at a time of economic uncertainty when people wanted to spend pennies on tarting up their living room for themselves rather than painting it beige to entice prospective buyers and make a quick buck.

Now, as we again look to put down roots rather than sell up and move on, and property programme presenters like Kirstie Allsopp (lovingly referred to by LLB as a "bunting monger") are now fronting homely craft programmes, the Changing Rooms mentality is back.

So if it were to make a return to our screens would he don the leather trousers once more, impressing us anew with his abilities to craft a convincing Louis XIV fireplace out of medium-density fibreboard and do whatever it was he did so aptly with scumble glaze? His answer is a firm but polite (and immediate) "almost certainly not" but he recalls the peak of his Changing Rooms fame – "when it was like rock 'n' roll" – with fondness.

Like any rock star, LLB received his fair share of fan mail. "There was one lady who used to send me slightly erotic rhyming couplets," he says with a saucy raise of the eyebrow. "And I don't mean porn, just a little bit bottom pinchy. They were written on notelets with woodland creatures on them, and she'd sign them with her name followed by '(Mrs)'. I loved that. I thought that was so British that these faintly inappropriate, slightly suburbanly salacious thoughts were expressed on a notelet, hanging on to a little degree of propriety."

In its heyday, Changing Rooms pulled in 13 million viewers – a figure that could compete with X Factor today – and often made the front pages when a makeover went awry (reactions from homeowners ranged from elation to tears, swearing and reaching for a bucket of white emulsion to begin the redecorating process immediately.)

LLB in particular was known for his ostentatious designs, which sometimes seemed to take their inspiration from high-end bordellos. "The funny thing is that I actually didn't have that many who didn't like it," he insists, which clashes somewhat with my own recollections of the programme. "But I want to keep that very quiet because I like my reputation as a bad boy."

Behind the scenes, he referred to the members of the public who appeared on the show as "victims", he "used to cheat furiously" and would "forbid them from eating carbohydrates" so they didn't get too lazy. All of which made for excellent telly, but something of a stressful weekend for all involved. As he puts it, "it was like leading a small attack on a walled city."

Changing Rooms remains popular internationally, particularly in Mexico, where LLB really is seen as a bit of a rock star. He laughs at this before adopting a faux-serious tone: "In Mexico I'm dubbed in Spanish and someone was telling me I should have a word with the production company because the man who does my voice sounds very gay." He shrugs his shoulders, and raises his eyebrows with a look that says 'well who can blame them?' "So I said 'I'm not really worried'. But then he said 'but he also sounds really common.'" His tone becomes exaggeratedly appalled. "Gay is one thing. Common, no."

Fame, however, is something he embraces warmly. He did, after all, allow cameras into his family home in 2007 for the reality series To the Manor Bowen, and he jokes that when trying to clinch a deal with an interiors client, he'll play the fame card by wining and dining them at celebrity haunt The Ivy, knowing there will be a few photographers outside who'll pap him as he exits.

"I feel really quite neutral about fame," he says. "It's been going on for 15 years and I really don't notice. People are very familiar with you and then they get all embarrassed and go 'oh it's like I know you but you don't know who I am'. But I'm like 'look, it happens all the time. I do it.' You know, I'll have a long conversation with this elderly bloke who looks vaguely familiar, whom I thought I bumped into at a dinner party and then realise it's Prince Phillip. It happened."

He talks fondly of his "glamour-friendly" teenage daughters Cecile and Hermione and his wife Jackie (who runs a successful design business with him as well as the business side of his celebrity) suggesting she is the brains behind the Llewelyn-Bowen brand. He is merely the hair (his hairdresser is, he says, "put on constant watch" for signs it's losing its considerable lustre) or more specifically: "I am the goose that lays the golden eggs and she makes some lovely omelettes. And feeds most of Gloucestershire with them."

In addition to the interior design, book and television work, he juggles other projects, lending his name to everything from wallpaper and bedding to mugs and curtains (not shampoo yet, though, despite having been approached by cosmetics companies more than once.

He is working on a paint range, and says naming the colours is the most fun part: "I've got so many teases in there. I will be expecting people to go into B&Q and say things to the lady behind the counter that you probably aren't allowed to say in daylight. One of my favourites is this wonderful steely grey which I've called Clooney. I thought I'd give the female British public a bit of a thrill by letting them ask for 'five litres of Clooney'. Actually, it sounds even more disgusting when you put it that way."

His face takes on the kind of expression that belongs on a naughty seaside postcard. At this point in the fantasy dinner party, Marilyn Monroe lets out a giggle, Oscar Wilde raises an eyebrow, and George Clooney, of course, shoots him a knowing look.

So I didn't get my dinner party, or see him in the leather trousers, but I've been happy to settle for a coffee and a chat. And he did unleash the power of his locks on me, adding with a toss of his mane as he gets up to leave, that "I think it's a good advert for what I do. There's a lot of buoyancy to my design and a lot of bouffancy to my hair."

Decorating With Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is published by Quadrille, priced 20.

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman, Saturday March 13, 2010