Banjo Beale - the new Scotland's Home of the Year judge: 'I'd be Marie Kondo's worst nightmare'

Arriving on Mull as a backpacker nine years ago, the Australian designer found a place he could call home

Banjo Beale is guest judge on this year's Scotland’s Home Of The Year 2023. Pic: Graeme Hunter PIctures

“An eagle just flew down to peck my chicken!” says Banjo Beale, mid-way through a discussion on the architectural merit, distinctive design and original style of the houses entered in the fifth season of Scotland’s Home of the Year, on which the interior designer is a new presenter.

But it’s all right because his neighbour rushes out and shoos it away. It’s that kind of place, Mull. “It looked beautiful, majestic, but my poor chicken…” he says.

It’s the kind of interruption to be expected when you’re chatting to someone who lives on a cheese farm on a Hebridean island. He’s speaking from his ‘orangery’, surrounded by frondy plants and reclaimed wood as testament to the magic 37-year-old Beale has worked on the interiors since he and husband Ro arrived there nine years ago as Antipodean backpackers and stayed.

Banjo Beale with fellow Scotland's Home of the Year 2023 judges Anna Campbell Jones and architect and lecturer Michael Angus. Pic: Jamie Simpson

This week Beale joins interior designer Anna Campbell Jones and architect and lecturer Michael Angus on Scotland’s Home of the Year, voiced as ever by newsreader Anne McAlpine to take us through front doors up and down the land for a good nosey as they search for Scotland’s most outstanding homes, culminating in a final with one voted overall winner.

While Campbell Jones seeks “bags of personality, care for the planet and that most important ingredient…love” and Angus ”the right building, in the right place, compassionately decorated to enhance the lives within,” Beale is “looking for a home that is packed full of character and just really well lived in.”

“The thing that struck me,” he says, “was just how personal the homes were. I was expecting them to be more show homes and crazy architectural gems but they were really quite incredible homes people had made imaginatively and oftentimes for not a lot of money, and that’s quite magical. The homes that stand out for me are the ones full of heart and personality that you could see were a labour of love for the owners over many years. They probably didn’t have a lot of money, but a lot of blood, sweat and tears had been poured in, so it’s an honour to go into them.”

It was winning last year’s BBC’s Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr that turbo-charged Beale’s career and for the cheesemaker turned fledgling designer, came as a surprise.

Scotland’s Home Of The Year 2023 judge, Banjo Beale, who is based on Mull where he runs an interior design company. Pic: Jamie Simpson/IWC

“I was actually the last person put on the show because the producers said what would a cheesemaker from Australia living on Mull know about design? One person went in to bat for me and said I think this guy’s got something a bit different, we should give him a punt and they said all right but he’ll be off the first week, so I think I surprised everyone when I wasn’t. I think it was living on an island that was the secret to my success, being resourceful and not afraid to drive a thousand miles to pick up something in the car that might have been a treasure.”

As well as launching his own design business on Mull and authoring a forthcoming book, Wild Isle Style: Resourceful And Sustainable Interior Design Ideas, his win led to his own show, Designing The Hebrides for BBC Scotland and BBC Two (now showing on iPlayer) in which he travels the islands transforming everything from bothies to bookshops. But for Beale, joining Scotland’s Home of the Year is the big one.

“It doesn’t matter that I filmed my own TV show and won Interior Design Masters, the minute I said I was on this show it was like I’d made it ,” says Beale..

“It’s become such an iconic show and I was such a fan, to be standing beside Michael and Anna feels more surreal than anything else I’ve done in telly because I felt I was in something bigger than any one of us combined. So it was an honour to do it and such a fun adventure to jolly around Scotland and snoop in people’s home s.”

Banjo Beale with fellow Scotland's Home of the Year 2023 judges Anna Campbell Jones and architect and lecturer Michael Angus, in one of the homes featured in this year's show. Pic: Graeme Hunter

While Beale is well travelled and has been in Scotland for almost a decade, one of the most enjoyable parts of being in the show was seeing more of his adopted homeland.

“I think we’ve gone to every corner of Scotland and it was magic because I haven’t explored places like Skye and Orkney. I think Mull is really special, but so is Skye and Orkney stole a little piece of my heart. Just seeing little pockets of Scotland you’d otherwise never get to and getting to peek into seemingly non-descript houses in cul-de-sacs you never turn down and finding something really magical, it was a surprise every time. It’s as if you’ve been blindfolded and then it’s an attack of the senses, so it’s super fun.”

Beale puts the success of SHOTY down to our curiosity to see what’s behind other people’s closed doors, along with a thirst for inspiration to see how to create a home without necessarily spending a fortune.

“I think we all love a snoop,” he says. “When I’m walking down the street I’m secretly cheering when someone has their front curtains open and the lights on. It’s inspiring as well seeing houses that might be like yours or something you aspire to, and it’s just a really positive show. It doesn’t critique the houses, it just celebrates homes. It’s real people and real homes, and some are extraordinary and some ordinary but have incredible features or amazing buildings or decor that take it to a whole other level.”

Banjo Beale in one of the homes featuring in this year's BBC Scotland show, Scotland's Home of the Year. Pic Graeme Hunter

Beale has put his finger on what SHOTY has that other property shows don’t: the symbiosis between houses and owners and how that creates a home.

“In my design I’m a bit of a storyteller, a dreamer and love going into a space and imagining who lives there, trying to find clues about who they are, what they do for a living, whether they like to cook, what their hobbies are. You can tell a lot from the way they decorate, their art, books… it’s about more than architecture or designer pieces, it’s about people. You don’t respond to homes that are perfectly put together, it’s more homes that are oozing the personality of owners.

“It’s a show that celebrates people’s homes because those are the places that keep us safe and inspire and nurture us and where we come together or retreat. As judges we were struck with the personal little touches and things unfinished or not quite perfect. They’re the things that are charming. And lots of shortbread biscuits are left out as well, so I don’t know whether that’s a bribe or the owners just like to cook,” he laughs.

Growing up four hours west of Sydney, Brendan Beale - named Banjo by his husband for his occasionally highly strung temperament, which he denies - was always an ideas man, working in advertising until he and Ro bought a one-way ticket to Sri Lanka and kept going. After following their noses to the Isle of Mull Cheese Farm, where they leased the cafe and shop from owner Chris Reade and her family, before transforming it, Ro now manages the production of the award-winning cheese and is working with the family on a distillery, while Banjo helps out on the farm and in the cafe when he isn’t working on interiors.

“Sometimes I go and turn 25 truckles of cheese. It’s a farm so you’re always mucking in,” he says.

Coming from a different culture gives Beale a different take on Scottish homes and things we take for granted.

“There are so many quirks I might not understand or are a revelation so it’s an education for me. I’m coming with fresh eyes, looking at how people live. Sometimes about the most normal things, I’m wide-eyed in wonder, but Anna and Michael will say ‘oh that’s just standard here’.

Such as?

“Going into gorgeous tiled Glasgow tenement buildings or up a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Kirkcaldy, or … I was in awe about how people have containers in their sink for washing up, you know, a little washing up container?”

Does he mean the humble washing up bowl?

“Yeah, a washing bowl. I was like ‘oh, I’ve never had that’ and my family didn’t; my nan, aunties, uncles, friends’ parents. And even to see dryers and washing machines in kitchens is a strange thing for me. Little things like that.``

“And in Australia everything is light, bright and open plan and I never understood why people would have lots of curtains and wallpaper and fabric then you move here and realise in winter the days are really short and dark so you have really warm houses. That’s what I gravitate to now and I absolutely love the character that comes with old buildings.

“I love the way you live, and living on an island, in winter we hunker down. There are no tourists and we gather around a fire and do craft and make preserves - because I live on a farm - and get ready for the summer. We do Woolly Wednesdays or Stitch and Bitch with the ladies in town and I make baskets, lampshades and chair backs from willow I’ve grown.”

“In Australia a home is an extension of the outside but in Scotland it has to be so much more. In winter you do everything inside, your animals live inside, as opposed to back in Australia where your dog lives in your backyard, so a home is so much more connected with the way you live.”

Speaking of dogs, is Banjo and Ro’s wolfhound cross greyhound Grandpa - named for being an old soul and a bit grumpy even as a puppy - happy he doesn’t have to sleep outside through a Hebridean winter?

“No, I think he’s still angry because we brought him over and he had to have a two night stopover in a pet hotel in Dubai, and in Australia he actually loved being out in the garden. He hates the rain.”

Never mind, he’s got the whole of Mull to explore.

“Yeah, and all the cheese he can eat.”

Being on an island with its need to be resourceful is an ideal environment for Beale, with his love of recycling, salvage and imaginative solutions. What others throw away, Beale enthusiastically refers to as ‘treasures’ and finds many such items turning up at his front door.

“When I moved here I started working with reclaimed furniture and making spaces out of quite literally nothing on our farm - a cafe and shop - and helping friends build their spaces. Living on an island, you have to use what you have and that’s the root of how I work.

“I’m forever collecting and keeping an eye on my footprint. I go back to that philosophy when I’m doing a job, whether down south in Bath or in Glasgow, that everything has to be sustainable, and try and use collect old stuff to reinterpret into interesting things.”

We’ve established that audiences like Scotland’s Home of the Year because we like a good neb and for inspiration but for the less gifted and more penurious, what would Beale suggest as an easy way to transform our homes?

“Well with everyone pinching pennies, it’s interesting to decorate before you renovate. We all have an itch to change our space and it might just be with paint. I painted my kitchen cupboard doors mustard and transformed my house and there are ways to make a room feel bigger by saturating it in one dark colour, or painting the ceiling to give the effect of infinity and raise it up.”

Are there ever any homes the judges encounter where they privately ask ‘what were you thinking?’

“No, I love anyone that just has a go,” says Beale. “I would never be a nasty judge because even though I can’t get behind crazy all-out maximalism, I think power to you for expressing yourself. Although, I can’t get behind fake plants. That’s the one thing that really annoys me. Plastic plants everywhere. But I don’t think we’ve had many of those on SHOTY.”

So the ones behind him in the orangery are all real?

“Yeah 100%.”

When it comes to the home he shares with Ro, it’s a case of the cobbler’s children as lack of time stops Beale changing it round, plus it’s a rented kit home that was rescued abandoned in a field.

“We’re essentially part of the family here at the farm but we don’t own the house so I call everything I do a rentavation. A lot of things are not built in, like I made a little leaning library with a sheet of plywood and dowel to hold magazines and design books, until we find our little dream home.”

Will that be on Mull?

“Oh yes, 100%. They’re stuck with us. We can’t imagine living anywhere else, but I’d love to live in a really old property with ready-made character that we’d fill with lots of old treasure. I’m sniffing around for somewhere.”

“Our home is a compromise because even though I’m an interior designer, unfortunately my partner has an opinion and is not afraid to tell me what he wants. I am quite possibly a little more minimal than he is, but we’re both adventurers and collect lots of stuff from our travels.

“When we went to Australia at Christmas we stopped by Indonesia and he bought a giant mortar and pestle, which he had to carry around for three weeks, and we’ve spent a lot of time in India and collected little throwaway terracotta chai cups which are beautiful but fragile. We carried back 60 or 70 so it was like travelling with a precious baby the whole way back but they’re a beautiful souvenir of a special time. We collect ridiculous things like that so our house is a motley mix of our travels and random stuff we’ve picked up.”

“And being on Mull, if there’s a castle or bothy anyone’s clearing out, they drop stuff off, knowing I just love treasure, so I always get first dibs. You know Marie Kondo, I’d be her worst nightmare.”

Maybe not as all of Beale’s finds spark joy in him and he’s turned cow bells into light fittings, old cheese shelves into wall panels, a copper water tank into a bench top and refunctioned an old church interior, from pews to wood panelling,

“The church made a whole farm shop and windows that have gone into the glass barn building. I said I’m totally going to hell cutting up this church but there’s just so much beautiful stuff in them. Pitch pine that makes the most characterful stuff you couldn’t buy new or it would be super expensive. Pews, there are lots of ways you can carve them up. Like a pig, there’re lots of cuts. Right now I’m dismantling and salvaging a little house someone said I could have - they were going to burn the wood and I couldn’t have that.”

Meanwhile Beale has plenty of interior design jobs and a collaboration making picnic rugs with tartan blanket company TBCo, and his book launch in October. After that, there ‘s another Scotland’s Home of the Year to film and he and Campbell Jones will be joined by another new presenter, Glasgow architect Danny Campbell who replaces Michael Angus.

“I hope people won’t mind an Aussie walking round and passing judgement on their homes,” he says.

“Also people underestimate the might of our design. People here are a bit bolder and braver and our homes are a little warmer and more characterful. I think Scotland has some really beautiful, interesting houses and I love that this show celebrates Scottish design and homes. It’s something everyone should be proud of.”

Scotland’s Home of the Year, BBC Scotland will air on Monday

Designing The Hebrides, Mondays, BBC Scotland, 10.30-11pm, Wednesdays, 8-8.30pm, and all episodes on BBC iPlayer now.

Wild Isle Style: Resourceful And Sustainable Interior Design Ideas by Banjo Beale, Quadrille Publishing Ltd, hardback £26.

2022 Interview: At home with Anne McAlpine, Voice of Scotland’s Home of the Year

2023 a sneak preview into some of Scotland’s Homes of the Year – Old Train House, Edinburgh

Alexandra Apartment, Kirkcaldy