Kevin McCloud: the Grand Designs presenter takes us behind the scenes of his own life

Summary

Homing In Podcast: Kevin McCloud – Behind the Scenes of a Grand Designs Icon

Episode Release Date: August 1, 2024

In this captivating episode of Homing In, host Matt Gibbard engages in an in-depth conversation with Kevin McLeod, a renowned presenter of the beloved television series Grand Designs. The discussion delves into Kevin's personal journey, his philosophies on architecture and design, and his unique perspectives on what makes a house truly feel like a home.

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Early Life and Upbringing

Kevin McLeod opens up about his formative years, growing up in Toddington, a village near Luton with a diverse array of housing spanning different eras. He describes his childhood home as a "little three-bedroom block" that his father, an engineer and rocket scientist, extended from an unfinished project. This eclectic environment, featuring 1930s semis, Victorian terraced houses, and 1940s bungalows, fostered his early interest in architecture.

"The house itself was unremarkable. It was 1960s. Mum liked her Bauhaus Guten to a Strozl inspired 60s wallpaper. But the crossroads was interesting because opposite was the playing field of the school."
— Kevin McLeod [00:57]

Education and Early Career

Kevin recounts his academic pursuits, initially studying languages at Cambridge before discovering his passion for theatre design. His involvement with the Cambridge Footlights, a prestigious comedy troupe, allowed him to collaborate with future stars like Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Emma Thompson. Despite his contributions as a designer, Kevin felt overshadowed by the emerging talents of his peers.

"I had a complete sense that they were going to make it and that I was not. That's the sense I had."
— Kevin McLeod [14:55]

Transition to Lighting Design

Faced with the practicalities of making a living, Kevin transitioned from theatre to lighting design, founding McLeod Lighting. He explains how his work evolved from theatrical sets to creating unique lighting fixtures for high-end retailers like Harrods.

"Nick moved into the lighting because that was the stuff which people, I found people didn't understand, actually. So we could design interesting fixtures with uplighters and down lighters and twinkly bits."
— Kevin McLeod [15:18]

Philosophy on Design and Architecture

A central theme of the conversation is Kevin's belief that the best buildings are those that intimately reflect the personalities of their inhabitants rather than conforming to fleeting fashions. He emphasizes the importance of autobiographical and personal elements in creating a meaningful home.

"The very best buildings are ones that somehow, intimately reflect the personalities of the individuals and do not cow to fashionable tastes."
— Kevin McLeod [00:06]

Insights on Lighting and Space

Kevin shares his expertise on artificial lighting, critiquing current trends that prioritize aesthetics over functionality. He advocates for lighting designs that enhance the ambiance without overpowering the space.

"What I do not like is seeing the fixed, seeing the fitting, seeing the light Source. And there's a real fashion at the moment for dangly light bulbs with a filament showing."
— Kevin McLeod [17:17]

Current Living Situation

When asked about his present home, Kevin humorously describes it as a "building site" — a work in progress. He values the continual process of remodeling as a way to experiment with space and maintain a dynamic living environment.

"I have lived in a series of works in progress. That's all I'll say about it. I'm always very coy about describing the house I live in."
— Kevin McLeod [22:00]

Traveling and Adaptability

Reflecting on his time traveling in a camper van during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kevin discusses the challenges and comforts of a nomadic lifestyle. This period reinforced his appreciation for flexibility and simplicity in living spaces.

"It was two years of it. And three nights a week or something. Four nights a week. And it's great in the summer and miserable in the winter."
— Kevin McLeod [23:49]

Designing for the Future

Looking ahead, Kevin envisions his ideal home as a place filled with books, comfortable furniture, and a view of the sunset. He underscores the importance of personal meaning in home design, advocating for spaces that cater to individual passions and lifestyles.

"It would have books, it would have a very comfortable sofa. It would have a place to work, it would have music, it would have wine, maybe even somewhere to grow grapes to make wine."
— Kevin McLeod [38:17]

Custodianship and Preserving History

The conversation touches on the concept of custodianship, where homeowners act as stewards of their property's history and legacy. Kevin highlights the delicate balance between honoring a home's past and introducing personal touches without overwhelming its original character.

"You cannot escape the culture of conformity because by making the contrarian statement, it's a knowing reference."
— Kevin McLeod [31:19]

Q&A with Grace McLeod

In a delightful segment, Kevin's daughter Grace asks him about his design leanings. Kevin clarifies that he doesn't align strictly with minimalism or modernism but appreciates a mix of styles that reflect personal growth and exploration.

"I have too much stuff and... I vary more. Maybe more to the 20th century, but... It's all about exploration."
— Kevin McLeod [45:58]

Final Thoughts on Authenticity in Design

Closing the episode, Kevin emphasizes the essence of authenticity in architecture and design. He believes that true craftsmanship and personal connections imbue spaces with lasting value and emotional resonance.

"All good building should have the capacity for absorbing human energy and then repaying it over time with interest."
— Kevin McLeod [34:XX]

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Key Takeaways:

• Personal Reflection in Design: Homes should be a direct reflection of the inhabitants' personalities and lives.
• Functional Aesthetics: Lighting and design elements should enhance living spaces without compromising functionality.
• Custodianship: Maintaining the historical integrity of a home while incorporating personal touches is crucial.
• Continuous Evolution: Embracing the ongoing process of remodeling can keep living spaces dynamic and aligned with personal growth.
• Authentic Connections: Building and furnishing with intention and personal meaning fosters deeper emotional connections to one's home.

Kevin McLeod's insightful perspectives offer a profound understanding of what makes a house a home, blending personal narrative with professional expertise. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about architecture, design, and the stories that shape our living spaces.

Transcript

[Kevin McLeod]

So that's a point I think I have learned over the years, is that the very best buildings are ones that somehow, intimately reflect the personalities of the individuals and do not cow to fashionable.

[Matt Gibbard]

Tastes, if you like.

[Kevin McLeod]

And so for me, the ideal home is not the thing that looks like a Wigmore street showroom, but which is absolutely speaks to the individual, which is highly autobiographical, which is personal.

[Matt Gibbard]

Hello, my name's Matt Gibbard and this is the Homing in podcast. For any first time listeners, a very warm welcome. This podcast is put together by the Modern House, which is the company I co founded back in 2005. We sell houses and flats, but not just any old thing. There are modernist masterpieces, artists studios, converted industrial buildings and so on. Just the kind of thing that you might find on Grand Designs. In fact, the aim of this podcast is to explore the meaning of home in people's lives. My guest discusses their childhood home, current place, and an imaginary home of the future, which gives us a glimpse behind the net curtain of their existence. Perched on my amateur psychiatrist couch today is the brilliant TV presenter, Kevin McLeod. Kevin's been a fixture on our tellies for so many years now that we feel like we already know him. But actually I didn't have a clue about his life story, so this conversation was really interesting from my perspective. He tells me about growing up in what he refers to as an architectural zoo of housing from different eras. We talk about his involvement with the Cambridge Footlights, the famous comedy troupe at Cambridge University where he collaborated with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and so on. He explains why he spent years living in a camper van and also why his future home will definitely have a view of the mountains. Kevin is one of the most engaging and fiercely intelligent guests I've spoken to on this podcast and he's full of all sorts of amusing anecdotes and top tips. Happy listening and I really hope you enjoy it.

So it's quite nice, Kevin, to meet someone that's potentially been to more modern houses in this country than I have. So I'm quite looking forward to this, actually.

[Kevin McLeod]

Unfinished.

[Matt Gibbard]

Unfinished, yeah. More building sites than I have. I think the thing that I really want to concentrate on with you is this idea that design and architecture and giving consideration to your home environment can really add a lot of value to your life. And I know you really believe that, and I'd love to look at that slightly through the lens of your experience, both personally and professionally, and also on a slightly more macro level as well. But we will start with delving into the past a little bit. So I'd love to know about your experience of home when you were growing up, a little bit about your family background. So where were you raised?

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, my family are all from Yorkshire on the east coast. A town called Withransee, which is not noted for its architecture. In fact, the environment agency considers it so unworthy that it's being left to fall into the North Sea. But I grew up near Luton, a place called Toddington. Very fine village it was where there was a school and my school occupied three buildings across two sites. And actually they built another building because the village expanded. So I grew up in a house that my father finished. He bought it as an unfinished project from a builder who went bust. And it partly sel built little three bedroom block of a house which my father then extended and a little garden on a corner on a crossroads. And it was really unusual. I was thinking about this recently, that the house itself was unremarkable. It was 1960s. Mum liked her Bauhaus Guten to a Strozl inspired 60s wallpaper. But the crossroads was interesting because opposite was the playing field of the school. The school was almost next door to the house. It was next to a pair of 1930s semis, beyond which was a row of Victorian terraced houses. Over the road, up the hill was 1950s semi detached houses which were rather of their period, very fine. They were built as three bedroom. It's a little estate, really well made, constructed after the war. Behind us in Chapel close were these 1940s bungalows and there were some 20s houses, then there were some 30s houses. And it was the whole agglomerate of this tiny patch of the village was this sort of almost like little architectural zoo of affordable modest housing over the centuries. And for that matter the schools that I went to also reflected that this was a time when education was still considered worth investing in and comprehensives were being built. So my village primary, which occupied Victorian and 1930s and a 1960s modernist building, took me then to a grammar school which was a Victorian Gothic building in Dunstable, which then became this radical 1970s red brick comprehensive which was a little bit like Reading University, on a tiny scale with fantastic facilities. And so the whole my whole experience growing up probably was. It was modest, but it was quite rich. It didn't involve Georgian rectories or modernist villas at all. But it touched on those worlds and if anything represented that the more accessible, the more public housing face of housing and place building, place making okay.

[Matt Gibbard]

And what was it like inside? What was Your bedroom, like.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, it's great. I had Thunderbirds wallpaper till I was 14. It was really exciting when I was 8.

[Matt Gibbard]

How was it when you were 14?

[Kevin McLeod]

It was less exciting.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

A bit more embarrassing.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

But then I had a funky 70s orange wallpaper with a purple bed throw. Yeah, Yeah. I had the smallest room in the house. I'm six'two and my bed was five ten. And as I grew, my father, who was incredibly practical, he was an engineer, a rocket scientist, and he. As you went up the stairs in this little house, there was a triangular. What would you call it? It's like a sort of a lump sticking out over the ceiling of the staircase. Stone, sloping staircase. And it was where he extended my bedroom, so my bed poked out into the stairwell. And so. But that was fine. He built that and it was. Everything was resolved. But it was the tiniest room, box room, but it was the only bedroom I had, so that was fine.

[Matt Gibbard]

So what did. Did you have enough personal space there? Did you feel, looking back on it?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. I think I defined personal space because I've been to places in slums in India where the only personal space anybody has is in their head, where a single space the size of a box room accommodates a family of four. And it's where they sleep and eat and cook, live, do their homework and the kids get dressed and so. And they manage. And I grew up in a village which had seven pubs, so personal space was found at school or in the pub or in the Methodist Youth Club or in the choir. There are places home, how you define it, isn't it? I mean, it can be your bed, your room, your street, your city, your country.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. Or your pub.

[Kevin McLeod]

Or your pub. Yeah. Or your choir. Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So I think you were the oldest, Right, of.

[Kevin McLeod]

What is it, three boys. Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So how would you describe yourself within that sort of hierarchy?

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, my younger brothers were both footballers and I wasn't. I was hopeless at sport and I was the brainy one, so. And the geeky one, geeky academic and the. And the artistic one. Yeah. And my dad was a scientist, so actually, the fact that my middle brother became a plumber and he took an apprenticeship with a pump company, that excited my dad just as much as me going to university. And. And so, yeah, we all bonded over engineering. We all bonded over ethics, models and Scalextric and Hornby railways and the taking something apart and putting it back together again. So we shared as brothers. We shared a huge amount, of course.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

Different personalities. But actually, weirdly, we all ended up doing similar kind of stuff because my youngest brother, who's in Australia and has been for 20 years, he's his builder and my middle brother has a property business, lettings and sales and builds as well and develops. So we've all ended up in that nefarious market.

[Matt Gibbard]

What about your mum then?

[Kevin McLeod]

Something about her, yeah. Mum was mathematically minded, a real geek. My parents both were very quiet, very geeky, engineering, science based. Mum did accounts, ended up running a social services department. But actually I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who said, do you not remember when people came round to your house when your parents entertained? They would. No, no, I have to stop you there. Nobody came round to the house, nobody came to stay, we didn't entertain. There was a very quiet family.

[Matt Gibbard]

Was there anything that you look back on now where you could see within yourself that you might be comfortable being in the public eye or making something of yourself in that way? Was that a drive?

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, I studied music and I did quite a bit of performing both at school and university and I think I. I did enjoy a bit of showing off and dressing up as a kid. And partly that comes from a desire to escape a sort of need to put on an act, to hide the self, to fit in. Because I was unusual in as much as I was not a footballing, snotty kid, I was a bit more geeky.

[Matt Gibbard]

Were you very tall at that age as well?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, I was fairly tall as a kid, yeah, yeah, gangly.

[Matt Gibbard]

Gangly. So what was school like for you? Did you. Did you not fit in? Did you get teased or.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, all of that. That's the quid pro quo of being academic. You get bullied and you get teased and you get prodded, but all of that you take in your stride and as you go through life you've discovered those individuals like you who fit because there are plenty of them who fit the same mold.

[Matt Gibbard]

It sounds like maybe there's a small part of you that I'll show them about it.

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, no, no, not at all. I think it's more. No, there's no sense of revenge.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

Who would go into television with a desire for revenge? What exactly are you proving? That you could become a better piece of tele fluff than somebody else? Yeah, no, I think certainly with other kids it was just about going through life and trying to find the soulmates because they're going to be fewer of them. And I think also that the. I mean, it might be fanciful to suggest that if you're on the Edge, if you're on the margin, then you appreciate other people who are too. And I think going to the margins of society, the edges, the places where people are experimenting more, is more interesting. And, yeah, it takes you somewhere. Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So it took you a little while, didn't it, to find your groove, sort of academically. After you left school, I think you went to Florence, didn't you, first of all, is that right, to study singing?

[Kevin McLeod]

You've done your research? Yeah. So, yeah, I got a place to study languages at Cambridge, which my parents were very excited about. And the Cambridge said, well, you speak French and you've done your A level and so on, so. Yeah, but we need another language, so go to Italy. So I went to Italy, worked in a pub over a summer and went there for about a year and a half and stayed with the family and worked on a farm. And it truly was. That year on the farm was the happiest of my life. It was the most formative experience, working in an organic vineyard. Why was was formative? Because I fell in love. Because I fell in love with the place, the language, the culture. I'd grown up in this, rather. We traveled as a family, we'd taken the car around Austria and Germany and French coast and stuff, but we never, as a family, stayed anywhere and immersed ourselves. And this was the 60s, anyway, when that kind of international travel just didn't really happen. Spain was still under the rule of Franco. So, yeah, to go to a country and to find that not only was it fascinating visually, artistically, but that culturally, in the everyday, the language, the personality of Italians and the way in which life is the tenor, the timbre of emotional relationships and the connection to place and connection to life and to family, that these things are very different when you spend time in a place which. And so I became fascinated with Italy. I mean, it was kind of such an unusual and different place. And so. And I got a place while I was there. The mother in the family I was staying with, she knew someone at the concert, she said, look, because I sang, played the piano, they had a piano. And she said, you should go and audition. So I went and auditioned and weirdly got a place at the conservatory and studied there for a year. And then they offered me another place. Then my kind of singing teacher from the UK took a detour from his holiday and wrote to me and then came to see me, said, no, you've got to go to Cambridge, you can't. And my father wrote me, I think the only letter he wrote to me in my Entire life saying, you've got to come back and go to Cambridge. So I did and everybody said, oh, you can go back and do the singing afterwards. And actually in Florence they said, yeah, you come back. But I never did. Which rather, rather vindicated everybody else, didn't it?

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. Right, well, what did. You must have been a good singer. Do you regret any of that?

[Kevin McLeod]

No, I've got. I sang at university a bit and I've got plenty of friends who are professional singers and. Plenty. I know a few and they're all. Some of them are very successful and I wouldn't swap my life for those. I think it's a very peripatetic and very. It's kind of. It's bad enough me being away two or three days a week for work, but to be away all the time on international tours is just. It's just travel.

[Matt Gibbard]

Okay, so you got a place to study languages and then you didn't. So what happened then?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh God, this interview's gonna be over. Before. So I did languages, then philosophy and then I changed again. I did a two year architectural history, Art History Part two. And at that time I decided I wanted to be a theatre designer. So I was all about trying to get out of the place and leave and.

[Matt Gibbard]

And you were part of the famous Cambridge Footlights?

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, I wasn't ever in full lights. No, I did. I was a designer. So I was designing sets and costumes and posters and stuff. Yeah, there was this hilarious show that went to the Edinburgh fringe that launched sort of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie's career and for that matter, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery and Paul Shearer and they were all in this show directed by Jan Ravens.

[Matt Gibbard]

And you've done the set for it.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, and I went and just went up. I was dating Jan at the time, so I went up and operated the follow spot for her for the show. It's not exactly the high point. People say, are you in there with all of these? No, I wasn't. I was operating the bloody follow spot. I was a technician.

[Matt Gibbard]

So at that time, obviously that's an extremely talented group of people. Did you have any sense that something was happening there?

[Kevin McLeod]

I had a complete sense that they were going to make it and that I was not. That's the sense I had.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah, fair enough. Okay, well, let's move on to the present day.

[Kevin McLeod]

Thank goodness.

[Matt Gibbard]

I know, exactly. Yeah, big sigh of relief. Well, actually, before we do that, there is one thing that maybe people don't always know, which is you had a lighting company called McLeod Lighting.

[Kevin McLeod]

I did, yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So how did that come about? From doing set.

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, yeah, well, sorry. I mean, you're just making me retrace what now appears to be an entirely itinerant and unfocused career with no sense of direction and a complete dilettante attitude. Which sums up my life.

[Matt Gibbard]

You said it. Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

I'm ideally qualified for the job I do. That's all I will say.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah, right, okay. Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

And I've been doing the same job now for 25 years. This was a time in the 80s when you could design and make something and stick it in the window of Joseph on the Fulham Road. And people go, oh, gotta have that. And so I worked for kind of all kinds of crazy decorators and designers and architects, and so I ended up doing a ceiling for Harrods for the Fruit hall. And that was basically loads of flying fruit and veg on the ceiling. And it all sounds a bit mad looking back, but this was at a time when Jigsaw were commissioning Nigel Coates to do amazing copper facades to their shops. And there was a sense, finally, that we were moving out of this grey period into something adventurous and futuristic. And so there was an opportunity to design and make things. And I did quite a lot of that. And I ended up doing some metalwork and actually, yeah, just drifted into making furniture and lighting and that came out of that. But by that time, I'd slightly given up on the theatre. As much as the standard equity rate for designing set for set and costumes in the 80s was £500, it wasn't. You weren't going to make. You weren't going to make a living just designing costumes and sets. So I had to diversify, which is really how that business came about. Nick moved into the lighting because that was the stuff which people, I found people didn't understand, actually. So we could design interesting fixtures with uplighters and down lighters and twinkly bits. And that was a great time.

[Matt Gibbard]

What advice would you have to people about artificial lighting in general? Do you think that there's a couple of things, a couple of rules that you should think about?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, I think it can get very tricksy.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

Right. And I'm looking over at an LED strip. I can now see. I can actually see the strip because I'm sitting down and I can look into the hallway and there it is underneath the handrail on the stairwell, lighting the stairwell very nicely. But from here I can see the strip. So what I do not like is seeing the fixed, seeing the fitting, seeing the light Source. And there's a real fashion at the moment for dangly light bulbs with a filament showing, albeit an LED filament. And this is. This breaks a cardinal rule for me because what it does is create glare in the eyes, which means you can't. You just shut your eyes. All you see is a negative image of the filament and you can't see anything else in the room. Yeah, you can get me going on this, but it's. That's another podcast. You did another podcast about domestic light?

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. Let's do it.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

Maybe for another time.

[Kevin McLeod]

Another time.

[Matt Gibbard]

No, I agree, though. I think, like. Well, there's a brilliant book about this called In Praise of Shadows.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yes.

[Matt Gibbard]

Have you read that?

[Kevin McLeod]

I have.

[Matt Gibbard]

Such a great book.

[Kevin McLeod]

And it's beauty. It's quite poetically written. Yeah, yeah. Who's the author?

[Matt Gibbard]

Junichiro Tanizaki.

[Kevin McLeod]

That's it. Yeah, yeah. And it's all about the. It takes that Corbusian idea that, you know, play of light and that shadow provides the definition. And if you swamp a building with light, if you put hidden lighting everywhere, you kill shadow. And in doing that, you destroy the mystery and beauty of the place. Glenn Mercut in Australia is famous for this, and he's probably one of the top five, 10 architects in the world, I think, and treads this beautiful line between. You see this in Japanese architecture, between the finite enclosure and the infinite space that is beyond, and the way in which the enclosure forms a compartmentalization of the wider universal space we all share into the domestic, and then does so in a translucent way and in a broken way. And I think that's a very. It's a very hard path to tread, and it's not one that's very easy to do, particularly in our climate. But it's really interesting when you come across it. Another book here, David Batchelor, the artist, wrote one called Chromophobia, which deals with the way in which people enjoy living in white painted art gallery spaces with nothing in them. And he says, look, we have this fear of color and historically rooted. But he talks about the excoriating nature of white space. The fact that it's cleansing and it is antiseptic and it's everything that 1920s modernists wanted.

[Matt Gibbard]

So what's your. What are your views on color, then?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, no, I. Bring it on. I've written a couple of books about that.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

Silly ones, but, yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

Well, what I was interested. And I'm sure you'll know all about this, the way that you perceive color changes through your life. But you were also talking actually before we started about how when you get older as well, you perceive light differently and you need more light as well.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. And of course, generally most people as they get older, develop some form of cataract in their eyes. So. So yeah, there are all kinds of physical infirmities and vagaries that we have to deal with. And yeah, besides then there's the kind of slightly less physical aspect of taste, which is that our tastes change and they're all different from each other. I wouldn't wear those trainers. You wouldn't wear mine. But that's the point is probably in five years time I would. So I'm very aware that in being in a position where you're writing or you're promoting or you're selling or you are broadcasting, to simply sound off and flout your taste is a dangerous thing because you might find yourself contradicting yourself in five years time. And for that matter, it just seems to me to just alienate most of your audience. So maybe that's a separate conversation about what is design as opposed to what is taste.

[Matt Gibbard]

Just leaving the podcast very briefly to tell you that this episode is sponsored by Vitsu. The Homing in podcast is obviously all about exploring people's life stories. And what's amazing about Vitsu's 606 universal shelving system is that people carry it with them throughout their lives. It's literally a physical backdrop to their past, their present and their future. They might inherit some Vitsu shelving from their parents, for example, and then take it with them when they move. The joy of Vitsu shelving is that it becomes a receptacle for the things that matter most in our lives. So our favourite books, photos, found objects, kids, paintings and so on. You wouldn't have thought it's possible to form an emotional attachment to some shelving, but that's exactly what happens. In my experience, it's the one thing that people refuse to part with when they sell their home. To find out more about it, visit VitSoo.com that's V I T S O E.com right, back to the podcast.

So where do you live now? What's your home of the present?

[Kevin McLeod]

Currently? A building site.

[Matt Gibbard]

A building site?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. With rooms. Like you go to a restaurant with rooms. Yeah. I've lived in a series of works in progress. That's all I'll say about it. I'm always very coy about describing the house I live in, only because I know that reputationally, it could be enormously damaging for people to realize that I'm as vulnerable as anybody else and as chaotic as anybody else. And. And I'd like to say that I live in an excoriating white box, but I do not. And, and, but it is a working progress.

[Matt Gibbard]

Are you building something from scratch?

[Kevin McLeod]

Are you? No, well, I'm remodeling something. But you know when. So when somebody says to me, oh, have you ever built? I said, the thing is, it's not a place I have ever. It's going to be. Am I currently in a phase of building? And the answer is often yes. So I. I think that's a hangover from being a maker, actually, is the idea of wanting to all the time experiment with space and make it and play with it and. And I leave it to others, people with more money and who can afford the finished thing and who can build the finished thing to experience that. But it's certainly not what I advise. I don't advise people to build because I think it's quite a destructive process and very. And the trick is, if you're building a house is to get it over with so you can live in it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Of course, like anybody else.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. You said that you've been traveling around in a caravan or equivalent.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. So this is a kind of COVID enforced. So. And I had this camper van which I would drive around the country and. Which sounds idyllic for people thinking I can holiday in the uk, sure. But doing it for work in February is less glamorous. And it was. I felt at the time, I felt it was quite healthy getting back to basics, filming people in muddy fields and I was experiencing life alongside them. They were going to bed in the caravan. I would be sleeping in my camper.

[Matt Gibbard]

Did you. Did you like it? Did you enjoy it?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. I've only recently gone back to hotels, so it's been. It was two years. Wow. Of it. And three nights a week or something. Four nights a week. And it's great in the summer and miserable in the winter.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

But actually really quite salutary and quite bizarrely, I became somewhat habituated. I became a little bit dependent on it. I didn't want to let it go.

[Matt Gibbard]

So as someone that's had a lot of your own building projects and of course witnessed so many others as well, what do you think is a kind of simple economic way for people to make their homes better? Have you got any thoughts on that? And when I say better, I don't mean On a taste level, I just mean obviously, on the way that it performs or the way that it helps support you.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, well, that's a big question in a way. I think the success of that television series I do has really sprung from the fact that human beings are so different and consequently our spaces are so different. And I'm very aware that if an architect is going to deal with a client, that actually the response is always going to be so very particular to that family, that household, that individual or that place. So there are some general points, aren't there? I think we can all of us be a little bit more aware of ourselves. So that's a point I think I have learned over the years, is that the very best buildings are ones that somehow intimately reflect the personalities of the individuals and do not cow to fashionable.

[Matt Gibbard]

Tastes, if you like.

[Kevin McLeod]

And so, for me, the ideal home is not the thing that looks like a Wigmore street showroom, but which is absolutely. Speaks of the individual, which is highly autobiographical, which is personal. And so, funny enough, last week it's the very last episode of Grand Designs 2022. And in that episode, I revisit a project that we first went to in 1997. One of the couple said to me that she remembers saying when we first met, because she did quite a lot of meditation with a crystal healing friend of hers who asked her to focus and draw images of the things that made her happy. And at the time I thought, oh, yeah. But I've come to realize that's what we should all be doing with our homes. We should all be trying to imagine the things that really make us happy. Now, if that happens to be Italian wine or a view of the sunset or playing with your children or tinkering with old cars, fine, whatever it is, just design your building around that. Make your home around that. Make it work in that way. And so prescribing for people is a dangerous thing. What you should do is actually think about what makes you happy, I think.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yes, exactly right. So I want to ask you specifically about Grand Designs. Now, it's obviously had a massive cultural impact. How would you assess the sort of nation's thirst and knowledge for modern design and architecture and the importance of their homes now compared, to. What was it, 1997?

[Kevin McLeod]

I find it very hard to draw conclusions. And if you said to me, oh, yeah, Bauhaus versus post First World War, I could write you an essay about that with a conclusion, but maybe not. But the point being is that you get that historical perspective, and I spend a huge amount of time driving in my car, in my van now, thinking, what does that mean? Yeah, I can point to the fashionable ideas that have come and gone, but in a way you think, hang on a minute, if I open my mouth, they'll be back.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

And so, Matt, I'm speaking honestly here because I find it quite hard. I mean, I look back at series one of Grand Designs, for example, and we had an oak framed house designed by Rod James, a very nice building, and people are still building those. And I look back at what Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till did in North London and they built this extraordinary house with a library tower. It was kind of a slightly post modern, but it was, yeah, using straw bales. Straw bales, also stacks filled with concrete. There was a kind of improvisational quality look, quite Italian. It was so exciting and unusual and eclectic. And I'm hard pushed to find projects as exciting as that that we've come across in 25 years. So, okay, and every, it seems every five years somebody does another Miesian Pavilion for sure. Every five minutes, everybody. Every five minutes they burn. Every. Every five years we film one. Because I've just about recovered from the last one. I have to tell you. I once went for a fairly standard procedure, but it involved pumping my digestive tract full of carbon dioxide and doing a scan. And this involved some intervention. And I went in and the X ray guy was running the big machine, said, it won't be me doing it today, it's the consultant. I said, really? That's unusual. Do they normally do this procedure? No, but he wants to come and see you. So this guy came and he just before he inserted the tube said, by the way, you said recently on television that you hate glass boxes. You've had enough of them, they're done. My wife and I have just built one and she heard you say that and she burst into tears. And then he inserted the tube and I did for a while think about trying to take him to the General Medical Council because I thought that was a little unfair, but yeah. Anyway, I have never told anybody that story, but the point is that you should tell more people that story. So now I refuse to film glass boxes because I'm worried this is going to happen again.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah, but there's a serious point in there actually, isn't there, which is that you're saying we shouldn't all do a sort of pastiche of what's already been done. I personally believe it's really important that we build things that reflect our own feelings at the time. And there's always a groundswell in the aesthetic movement at any moment, and we probably need to try and tap into that.

[Kevin McLeod]

John Leyland, who was a 16th century Elizabethan English traveler, I think, used the frame in Time of Mind. We're building in time of mind. And what a lovely phrase that is because it suggests that somehow a building should reflect our minds, but also our time.

[Matt Gibbard]

Exactly.

[Kevin McLeod]

And that there should be a subconscious and coherent. And it's an expression of integrity, isn't it, to say, I'm confident enough to be able to do something that is me, but also of the here and now. And that's the gloriousness of architecture, as opposed to automotive design, for example, is that it's fixed, it's rooted in a place, it has to be part of a place as well as an expression. I was having a conversation earlier on today with one of your colleagues about chairs, about the fact that apparently every house in London now has Hans Wegner chairs. Except they're not Hans Wegener. They're called Hans or Wegener, but they're from some workshop in China and sold through any number of retailers. And there's this sort of tremendous comfort that we all succumb to, doesn't matter who we are, of joining a club, that we've arrived, we've got that thing, we've acquired that object, and we've made that physical statement in our home, in our world, that we control our environment.

[Matt Gibbard]

As you're talking about that, though, I was thinking, nearly 20 years ago, my wife Faye and I bought ourselves an original Eames rocking chair. It's a beautiful one, grey. See the fibers in it?

[Kevin McLeod]

That's it.

[Matt Gibbard]

Stunning. But as soon as everyone else had one, we just hated it and we. We sold it. We couldn't bear to live with it anymore. And that's the problem, I think, isn't it? It's because we're so bombarded with images of these iconic shapes of things.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

That it looks like everyone else's place, then.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

And it's very hard to make it not look like everybody else's place. But I think it's important.

[Kevin McLeod]

But the moment you do, you. There's a sort of way in which you're being contrary, isn't it? You can't escape the culture of conformity because by making the contrarian statement, it's a knowing reference.

[Matt Gibbard]

Quite. It's impossible to not be knowing, isn't it? I think you said it earlier, actually. The most important thing is clearly to surround yourself with things that have personal meaning. Ideally, Things that you have traded with other people that are important to you in your life, in a way, don't you think?

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, here I think you very cleverly hit on a. I think a really quite important idea in that we've talked about the chairs as bearing the names of the designer without understanding who made them. And I'm very aware that you can spend 30 quid on a plate and you can choose to spend it on a plate that's made in Portugal by a small company, or a plate that's made in China but wears the name of a posh UK brand that used to be a pottery where they used to make things. Or you can buy it from. From a local ceramicist down the road who probably sell you that plate for the same price that you can buy a plate in John Lewis for. So it's a topsy turvy world of value. I've got a vase at home which I've. In the bottom of the vase is a piece of paper and I kept the piece of paper because it's got the maker's name on it, the glass blower. And I kept it because I thought if I don't keep the piece of paper, I'll forget who made it. Now, I didn't meet this person, I actually bought that thing in a gallery. But I've got one or two other pots and bits and bobs made by friends, some of them and some made by makers who I've met where I don't expect anybody else to value that pot because the relationship I had with the friend who made it or the person who I met who made it is very personal to me. And all I can tell you is that the emotion and the energy, human energy that went into the pot, it's the same energy that goes into building a house. And the more of that there is, the more of that will be transmitted. And it. Charles Moore. This is a quote I tire myself from repeating, but it's so good. He was an American architecture critic and architect, nutcase man. But he said that all good building should have the capacity for absorbing human energy and then repaying it over time with interest. The idea that the maker puts this energy into the making of the object and that it's there forever for all of us to tap into. And the more you know that person, the more you know about them, the stronger that energy is, so that the cycle. When I had my lighting business, we used to get people, designers and architects and clients, and it would always excite the guys working in the fabricators Had a little forge. Norman ran the forge. He used to get very emotional about the fact that people would close the loop that he would spend three or five months making an object. This is a man in his 60s, so this is approaching retirement. Each object he made was a chunk of his life, so valuable in terms of the time allotted to him and remaining. And then it would leave the forge and that would be it. It got to the next thing. If somebody came back and said thank you, it would be a huge moment for him, but also for them because they would be meeting the person that had made that object. And here I think we move from this treadmill world of brand and object and value and conformity and names and exploitation and manufacturing in the Far east and we move into a different world where actually, for very little more money, you can enjoy a relationship with these people and this magical process of making things. And the glorious thing is that the only thing pretty well that we still make the UK is our houses. So if you commission a building or you get the builders in to do your loft extension, or you buy a table from a maker, or you go to an exhibition and find somebody making carpet or placemats and you buy six of them for five quid or whatever, you just matter what level you're spending, you engage with these individuals and you experience something quite magical actually, compared to the process of buying and consuming brand. And you become a patron, not just a paying customer.

[Matt Gibbard]

Well, yeah, some people that we've sold houses to, they refer to themselves as custodians, which is interesting, I think. I did a podcast with Tom Broughton, who's the founder of qbit, the spectacles brand.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yes.

[Matt Gibbard]

And he bought a flap from us and it's gray, two star listed. And he has to use the pre existing holes to put his picture hooks or nails in to be able to hang up a picture. Yeah, it's quite extreme, isn't it?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, that is very extreme. Conservation officers are coming around telling you what color to paint your fireplace.

[Matt Gibbard]

Exactly. But he loves it. There's a real thrill for him. And the fact that, you know, there might have been a Ben Nicholson hanging on there at some point originally.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So he buys into that. But yeah, it's interesting, this idea of custodianship.

[Kevin McLeod]

That's a really interesting point. Something we haven't touched on is the idea that you move in because many people buy a listed house and the first thing you do is knock it apart. You can remove all the stuff that they fell in love with, all those thousands of tiny details.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

And then sell it eight years later, which, in terms of the house's history, might represent 3% of its entire life. So I think that idea of reaching back and using the building as a means of it's, again, it's about reaching for authenticity, isn't it? Getting beyond.

[Matt Gibbard]

Ask the building what it wants to be. Yeah, exactly.

[Kevin McLeod]

And trying to respect its narrative, the story it tells you is quite a. It's a hard thing to get right. Yeah, hard thing to get right because you. You can bowdlerize it, just basically rip out, remodel, fake its history almost. Yeah. Or you can try and add a gentle chapter at the end without altering the previous narrative. Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yes, exactly. Let's move on to the future.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Matt Gibbard]

So my business partner, Albert, right. Bit like me, seen a lot of houses over the years, and he would go around with a little black book and he would note down features that he particularly thought were engaging or interesting in some way. And the idea was that at some stage, these might come together to form a triumphant casa. Albert. And he realized in the end that wouldn't work until it'd be like a Frankensteinnised monster of a thing. But I did wonder, have you ever done something similar and, you know, seen things as you've gone along and thought, I might want to incorporate those into my house of the future, Like Albert.

[Kevin McLeod]

I started that way.

[Matt Gibbard]

Did you?

[Kevin McLeod]

Making notes, taking photographs. I still take photographs of buildings a lot, but they. I take the photograph in order to be able to remember the moment as much as anything else and the experience. And so now, no, I appreciate that other people. I get to stay in other people's houses, spend a day or two or have a few days with other people. And filming House of the Year is amazing because you can look at some amazing, wonderful new buildings. But I come away nearly always with impressions and ideas and enthusiasms. I tend to feed off the energy of the place more than I do the details. And I've come to realize, like Albert, that what matters is things that matter to me, not to other people.

[Matt Gibbard]

So in that case, if you were to draw a picture of your kind of ideal place to live.

[Kevin McLeod]

Hard to draw a picture because I don't know what it looks like.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. So what would it have?

[Kevin McLeod]

It would have a number of things that I do think are important. So it would have books, it would have a very comfortable sofa. I have a comfortable sofa. I've got that far. It would have a place to work, it would have music, it would have wine, maybe even somewhere to grow grapes to make wine. And it would have a view of the sunset. And it would have a stoop on which to sit and enjoy the sunset. Drinking wine, learning to play the guitar or something like that.

[Matt Gibbard]

Why the sunset?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, I just, I. I think very personal. I just. All my life I've just been mesmerized by them, by the colors, by the change the light fireworks show. And it's free. And how many sunsets do you get to see in your life? Doesn't matter. Can't be enough. Can't be enough of them. Yeah, can't be too many of them.

[Matt Gibbard]

And how much space would it have? How much space is enough for you?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, I don't know. I don't need much. Don't need. Do any of us need much?

[Matt Gibbard]

We probably don't. That's kind of why I asked you. I mean. And would you see it having one big open space, Would you say it being quite cellular? What do you think on that front?

[Kevin McLeod]

I think the way that we live relatively informally these days needs kind of semi open plan or broken plan. I like cellular bedrooms. I like doors. I like privacy. Yeah. But I equally enjoy the sense of connection to space. So it's as much knowing that there's something beyond the journey, the route through the narrative of a building or a place and actually out through into the world beyond. So I've always been a fan of skylights because they just give you this view to infinity. Even in the middle of a city, you can see the stars and the heavens and the clouds and the moon. I mean, how romantic to be able to see the universe as it were from your sofa or your bed and. Or your shower. And I've always enjoyed showering outside. I like being outdoors, I work outdoors. So to have a house that didn't give me the maximum connection to the outdoors, I think would be. That would be limiting for me. Yeah, but it's, you know, I'm very aware these are hugely personal likes and dislikes.

[Matt Gibbard]

What sort of landscape is your favorite?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, mountains. Mountains, yeah, without a doubt. Yeah. Hills and mountains. I didn't grow up anywhere with mountains, but I spent some time in. In them and like them.

[Matt Gibbard]

So would this potentially be at altitude?

[Kevin McLeod]

Could be. But I have a view of the Malvern Hills in one way and the Welsh mountains the other, and I think that's good too. So it's just a. Just the comforting connection. Visual connection is helpful.

[Matt Gibbard]

Do you prefer city or country?

[Kevin McLeod]

Generally not very good at cities.

[Matt Gibbard]

Why not?

[Kevin McLeod]

I never grew up in one and never enjoyed it. And I couldn't necessarily easily find the romance of. Not that I'm an astrology fan, but I'm a Taurean bovine element in a china shop. Yeah, well, bovine element, animal of the earth.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

So, yeah, the idea of contact is quite important.

[Matt Gibbard]

And so do you feel that sort of idea of getting very hands on with the earth and with the land around you, is that really important to you?

[Kevin McLeod]

Hugely. Every day really count number of things every day you have to do, I have to do. One of them is make contact with the soil and whether that's digging or handling or planting or just planting my feet on it. And yeah, the energy of the natural world isn't. I don't see this as a romantic alternative. I see it as essentially part of life. It's about taking a place in a natural order of things as an animal, which is what we are. And also I find the idea of forming outdoor spaces as powerful as forming indoor ones that you're ordering, shaping the world in your imagination, in your image.

[Matt Gibbard]

To an extent, and is a rather grandiose word decoration. But how would, how would you see your house being decorated? What would you see in terms of color or things around you or the things that you're living with?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah, I think, of course, very few of us live in isolation, so the choices of how we furnish and decorate our homes are made usually in collaboration with somebody. And it's nice when it's collaborative, not combative. In the Venn diagram of taste and choice, it's great when there's an overlap because otherwise you end up furnishing your house using a sort of law of diminishing returns. Really, it's what you both least hate, which is miserable really. So I think the idea of being able to explore taste is a. It's a bit of a journey and you see stuff and it's again, highly personal. But I think I have a fondness for mid century furniture, but I'm not a vintage freak at all. I just enjoy. There's an odd bit of 1950s furniture I like and I think that post war design in Europe, I think was a very interesting time and a time when we were exploring ergonomics as much as we were formal design and that's satisfying. And I'm certainly not a fan of frills, but plenty of people I know and love are and I enjoy their exploration of that. That's the thing. This is not. You don't go to war over the fact your neighbor's got a BMW, while you prefer an Audi. You don't go to war over these issues. You simply accept that there is a fantastic capacity for diversity among human beings. And my job is to record that and to try and therefore enter into other people's minds and admire their position, try and understand their position. And so I'm very aware that I'm not a. I don't make a good decorator, I don't make a good home furnisher because I am never quite sure about what I'm going to do next or what's going to hit me or what I like. So it's not. It's not a way to do it, is it? Let's do the white kitchen. Oh, this is going to be a 50s room. No, it's. I can't do that. I can't apply myself with confidence because I'm too interested in too many things.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah, I get that. Is there a pre existing house anywhere that you would love to live in?

[Kevin McLeod]

Oh, no, you can choose.

[Matt Gibbard]

Any Glenn Merker you mentioned earlier?

[Kevin McLeod]

No, no, because it's Glenn Merkert's house.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

The house he designed in Victoria for clients. His very first building, which he then later bought from them and then extended. Yeah, that. That's Glenn's house. That's his house he designed for them, but also for him. So I, I find it quite easy to say that I don't get jealous about, but I often find myself saying to people, oh, I could live here, but no.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah.

[Kevin McLeod]

So it comes back to the particular, doesn't it? And the way in which buildings are such a response to place and such a response to people.

[Matt Gibbard]

Yeah. So it happens that we've got your daughter Grace here today. The brilliant Grace. Hi, Grace, who works with us. And I'm going to say it on the makeup lust, but she is amazing and she's such a talented writer and.

[Kevin McLeod]

Editor and I think so too.

[Matt Gibbard]

She's fantastic. So I'm going to ask her to ask you a question because I'm intrigued about what she's going to ask you. So what do you think, Grace?

[Kevin McLeod]

Great.

[D]

So dad, my question to you, and I think you may say that you can't answer it, but let's give it a crack. Is it seems to me you were talking about in the 90s when there was this kind of post grey period where there was a kind of explosion and people like Jigsaw were putting copper on the front of their houses, of their shops and you were designing lights in the shape of fleur de lis in rusty metal and montgolfier balloons. And it was all quite extra for.

[Kevin McLeod]

Want of a modernist. No.

[D]

And my question. And you say that you don't live in a white box, but you live in more of a white box now than you ever have.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah.

[D]

Do you think you've become more of a modernist or a minimalist as you've got older?

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. You see, I'm going to take issue with you about the kind of the lifestyle thing, because I think of myself as being minimalist at all now. I've got too much stuff and I. And if anything, I. Varying more. Okay. Maybe more to the 20th century, but. Okay. That's the first thing to say. The second thing is that 80s 90s period of excess, I worked in the theater. So in fact that kind of theatricality of that period suited me and suited the work I was doing. The third thing I'm going to say is that actually our homes where we lived, you growing up, most of the stuff hanging from the ceiling and on the walls was prototype stuff. So it was all the stuff that came out the back end of the business which wasn't quite fully finished or wasn't. So the product we were doing was some actually was quite there. We did quite a lot of contemporary craft stuff as well. In fact, there was a very well selling porcelain lamp with a beaten tale of a. It was quite a modern piece of sculpture and it was called the Gracie, named after you. And so that point we were talking about earlier, which is that you look back over your own life and it's quite hard to see. There was no kind of blinding light. There was no kind of transformative moment where I thought this is the true path forward at all. It was more exploratory and exploring ideas and seeing what worked. And I don't think of. I don't even think of Le Corbusier's home. And you and I went to a Corbusier house in Stuttgart together a couple of years ago, a few years ago. And I didn't find that building contradictory in any way to visiting a French chateau. In a way, they're all of their time and they're all essays. They're all attempts to explore space and to find a meaning in a built thing. And sometimes that is. And very often that is romantic. There's a romantic experience. And I even found Corbusier's building with that rooftop. He just did a little paddling pool in his gym and his exercise areas on the roof for sunbathing. And I find that romantic. You look at the stuff and as often the case you look at a modernist building versus a photograph of a boudoir in the rococo style, and you think these are worlds apart, but they are not. They're all built by humans for humans, and they are all explorations. And I think that's so I. Is that an answer? The fact that. Actually it is. What I'm trying to do is pretend that there's some kind of sense in my life linking all of these ideas together.

[D]

I think that's what you've been getting at the whole way through, though, that actually it's about. Like you were saying, it's about exploration. It's about maybe you'll never know. It's just what you're doing and making each of your building projects is trying to work it out.

[Kevin McLeod]

Yeah. I don't think Bernini, I don't think Palladi, I don't think that William Morris, don't think they embarked on projects fully understanding what they were doing. And I don't think Corbusier did. He pretended. And Corbusier, in fact, like Picasso, went back over his life's work and burnt a huge amount of it and rewrote his notebooks in order to make a coherent story. Palladio did the same thing. Palladio published books about his buildings, and the buildings do not resemble the drawings. The drawings are highly elaborate, and they're fictitious, idealized versions of the building. So I think throughout architecture and design, I think designers and architects have had the ability to draw and therefore have used that skill as a means of rewriting their own histories and making sense of their own lives in an attempt to try and say to the rest of the world, it's okay, guys, I got this taped. You just follow me.

[D]

Unfortunately, your archives and the channel for videotape.

[Kevin McLeod]

Well, my archive's making its way to Alpha Centauri currently. What a terrible legacy. Electromagnetic radiation.

[Matt Gibbard]

Thank you so much, Kevin. Thank you.

Thank you to Kevin. And thank you all very much for listening. If you're enjoying homing in, it will be much appreciated. If you could spare a moment to leave us a quick review. It makes a huge difference because it helps other people to find the show. A reminder as well to please tap follow on your screen so that you're alerted about new episodes as they get released. We've got some incredible guests coming up, including a legend of the design world, a comedian, a chef, and all sorts of amazing entrepreneurs as well. As always, do take a look at the Modern House website and we'll post up some photographs on there. You can follow the link in the show notes or visit themodernhouse.com this episode was produced by Hannah Phillips and edited by Oscar Crawford with music by Father. Thank you again for being here and talk to you all next time. Bye for now.