What did you miss?
Grand Designs viewers could not get over Kevin McCloud’s different look as scenes from his first episode of the show in 1999 aired.
The Channel 4 programme is marking its 25th anniversary by revisiting some of the people who have featured on the show over the years. In the instalment on Wednesday, 30 October, McCloud returned to Newhaven after 25 years to catch up with Tim and Jules – the very first people to document their build on Grand Designs.
And viewers were just as interested in seeing designer and TV star McCloud in his younger years as they were in the project, jokingly referring to him as “baby Kev”.
What, how and why?
The episode followed Tim and Jules as they built their own home on some land they had purchased in the East Sussex coastal town of Newhaven. They had just six months to get it done as Jules was expecting their baby boy.
The pair both had two daughters each from former relationships, and while the new house was being built the couple and all four girls lived in Jules’ smaller property, The race was on to finish their ambitious build in time for their new arrival to be born there.
As clips from the original show aired, many fans posted messages on X commenting on how young McCloud looked. Others remarked on the fact the now 65-year-old had a full head of dark brown wavy hair back then.
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“Younger Kevin!” exclaimed one, as another posted: “Wow, look how young Kevin looks.” “I’ve never seen Kevin McCloud quite as young as *that*,” said another.
“Wow! Kevin had red clothes!” said someone else, noting the TV star’s changing sense of fashion. “The hair!!!!” exclaimed another, as somebody else joked: “In which we discover Kevin McCloud’s secret history as the keyboard player in a 1980s new romantic band.”
“Young Kevin looks like Carmody off All Creatures Great And Small,” quipped another viewer. “All that hair!” one person said on Instagram.
One joked: “I don’t recall 1999 looking that old and dated. Wasn’t 1999 only about 4 years ago?” “I’ve always said I watched from the start, but I nearly choked on my dinner when he said ‘twenty-five years ago…’” another viewer wrote.
Viewers intrigued by the early days of Grand Designs
Others were interested in the prices from when Tim and Jules were building their home, with several noting how different things were then and remarking on the fact they paid £86,000 for the land.
“Like watching the Amish raise a barn, handheld tools… graft…” said one on X. “Mad to think land was so cheap 25 years ago,” commented another person. “Men using hammers again rarely see that these days,” one said.
Somebody else said “75p bricks, hods, jack planes and knocking clout nails in with a hammer” was “proper olden days stuff”.
Had the property changed in 25 years?
McCloud had been expecting the house to have changed a lot in the 25 years since he had seen it. But he was stunned to discover that the family had not really decorated again in that time, so it still had bright gold coloured walls in the kitchen and a wooden bathroom.
However, the outside had changed a lot, with what used to be a bare landscape now a forest of trees and plants.
McCloud thanked them for letting the Grand Designs team follow their project in the first place, explaining: “We didn’t really quite know what we were doing because we had to kind of forge a different kind of programme that hadn’t existed before. So thank you for putting up with us… it was a huge privilege to come back.”
Grand Designs airs on Channel 4 on Wednesdays.