I think more than any programme on television, Grand Designs gets the closest to demonstrating the core pathology of the British psyche. You know Grand Designs (11 September, 9pm, Channel 4), which turns 25 at the start of the new series and celebrates with a compilation show that surely constitutes the easiest working day of Kevin McCloud’s life: a couple, often pregnant but sometimes not, have decided they want to build a house. Sometimes they already have a house, but knock that down. Sometimes they just have a plot of land that is essentially unreachable by any earthly vehicle.
Kevin McCloud is there, in a well-knotted linen scarf and a zipped-open puffer jacket, staring at the patch of grey-white sky above them. “It’s going to be big, then,” he says, and the man in the couple will laugh. “Yeah,” he’ll say. They look at each other. They’re excited. Their forever home. A monument in the image of their love. All they need to do is set their marriage on fire, pour petrol on that fire, spend £700,000 more than they can afford, miraculously somehow afford it anyway, and go 18 months over schedule. This is the hell they will endure to live in a slightly nicer house than you.
