A Diamond in the rough

In a media career spanning 15 years, presenter and columnist Dominik Diamond has made a virtue out of thinking on his feet, but when he was asked to pitch some TV show ideas for the Discovery Channel earlier this year, he came to regret his quick wit.

Best known as the presenter of Gamesmaster and Radio 5 Live's Sportscall, the self-confessed "old hand" at fruitless executive brainstorming sessions plucked "the first idea I could think of from my ass" - a ten-part series detailing the travails of the renovation of his Glasgow townhouse. "Nobody was more surprised than me when the idea was commissioned on the spot," he says.

With his bluff well and truly called, but buoyed by hubris, the presenter reasoned that the TV project represented his family's best hope of seeing their five-year lapsed home improvement plans realised. Diamond, nevertheless, returned north to impart the news with a sense of apprehension. With only eight weeks until filming commenced, Diamond's wife Phoebe says she "was initially broadly in favour of the project but as things progressed I become increasingly unreconciled to the realities of such an invasive public makeover".

Based in the southside urban village of Strathbungo, dubbed Glasgow's answer to Notting Hill, the Diamonds were unprepared for the impact the unplanned arrival of a third child brought. Over budget by some 25,000 and wildly behind schedule, with a final instalment of filming postponed until after their baby's imminent birth, the couple's adventures are nearing completion.

Neverthless, that hasn't prevented their perspicacious builder cum mentor, Brian Robertson, opining that if the child has any sense it will remain in utero until the last nail has been sunk, the mess has been excised and the Diamonds' "rumble in the bungo" can finally be laid to rest.

Like the process that saw Rubble Trouble commissioned, the show, which debuts on The Discovery Channel tonight, is an object lesson in the perils of indecision and unrealistic aspirations for any budding home developer.

"We've had a sympathetic director and crew throughout but nothing could have prepared us for the upheaval, stress and mess of trying to juggle major construction work with looking after a young family." Diamond says.

"I've spent the last few months completely paranoid that we'd be poisoned with all the plaster dust. I've spent endless hours of the last few months looking at the daily mountain of crew and tradesmens' coffee cups and wondering if our labours would ever end."

A DIY novice with a desire to learn on the job, Diamond gamely mucked in with knocking down walls, bashing brickwork and labouring with a view to transforming the townhouse's basement, bedrooms and bathrooms in between filing his weekly newspaper column, appearing on TV clip shows and presenting a breakfast show on Real Radio.

Tonight's instalment introduces their plans, alongside an ongoing bone of conflict in the Diamond household. Phoebe is a student in her final year of a pottery and ceramics course. She has an eye for colour, style and detail and wants the whole job completed as quickly as possible with the minimum of fuss.

Her husband is an inveterate hoarder of comics, gadgets and boys' toys. The presenter wants a bar and a pool table, his wife extols an aesthetic of pared-down good taste and an aversion to "anything tacky". They agree, however, to remodel their basement by creating a large open-plan space flooded with natural light and incorporate a sleek kitchen-diner area and a family games room within the rambling floor-plan before tackling the quagmire of their unlovable south-facing garden. One of their bedrooms is slated for conversion into a luxurious family bathroom with a free-standing tub and a football-friendly wall-mounted plasma screen television. The final instalment of their journey, to be broadcast in March, will see the project three months behind schedule and, Diamond laughs, "staring at a mountain of debt that is visible from space".

It's a financial position that ensures Diamond qualifies for an HSBC Premium Account. "Sure I've got an awesome overdraft but as a perk I've got someone personally assigned to look after me. When you spend 45,000 on doing up your house you don't have to speak to someone in a call centre." Brian Robertson says that both the Diamond's bank balance and their peace of mind could have been greatly enhanced if only they'd done their research and agreed a plan in advance.

Tonight, for example, a roof is needlessly strengthened to support a bath far heavier than the one that's ultimately installed, days are lost to save the cornicing in the office and the six days allocated to the bathroom's overhaul inexorably drifts beyond six weeks.

"Dominik proved himself to be better with a saw than with plaster or brickwork and he's a good general labourer - a very general labourer. This is a warts and all show but I'd say, on reflection, I've enjoyed the experience - up to a point. I'm glad it's all come out in the wash and we'll finish in a matter of days. As far as viewers are concerned, I'm sure they'll learn a lot if they are considering doing this kind of work," says Robertson.