Kevin McCloud Is, Hands Down, The Greatest TV Host of All Time

I remember being really sick this one time in high school—the kind of sick where you genuinely weigh up whether you might have meningococcal. Stiff neck, head full of cement, laid up on the couch for days. It should've been hell, but it wasn't. In fact, that flu was a gift. A gamechanger. Courtesy of a three-day long Grand Designs marathon, my (likely) brush with meningococcal became an introduction to the one, and only, Kevin McCloud.

If you don't know who Kevin McCloud is, I feel sorry for you. Sure, you could read this article and try to get a sense of the man. Of why he is so loved. But reducing Kevin McCloud to a few hundred words is impossible. My advice would be to put aside five days of your life as soon as possible (catching a flu so bad you think you're going to die also works) and power binge all 160 episodes of Grand Designs, the show McCloud has hosted—and given life to—since 1999.

I say "given life to" because, honestly, without Kevin McCloud, Grand Designs would be nothing. Unlike an undeniably perfect show, such as Come Dine With Me, Grand Designs couldn't stand on its own. Take Kevin McCloud away and it's just another home makeover show where very wealthy people pour money into their very big dream homes. In fact, watching it as a millennial who works as a "writer" and wouldn't even be given a home loan by the smarmiest pre-GFC mortgage broker is akin to masochism.

And yet, I watch. We all watch.

And we watch because Kevin McCloud is the most puzzlingly charismatic TV host ever to grace our screens. The sonorous voice; the dad fashion; the constant, unrepenting sass. Profiles of the popular host often throw the word "heartthrob" around, and he has amassed his own fair share of erotic fan fiction on the dark corners of the internet. But I don't think that's quite the right description.

Kevin McCloud is a character. He's the person you dream of being sat next to at an otherwise dull dinner party. He would've snuck in a very nice bottle of wine, but kept it low key. He would absolutely love a good gossip, you can see it in his eyes.

This is all secondary though, if we're asking ourselves why Kevin McCloud—a relatively plain middle aged British guy—is the greatest TV host of all time (excluding RuPaul). What is vital is that when he's hosting Grand Designs, Kevin McCloud acts as the audience's proxy—and gives us all permission to indulge our inner cynic, the worst angels of our nature.

No house is ever going to work. Each build is a bigger clusterfuck than the last, and every single one is the dumbest idea in the history of architecture. Yes: you're going to go £400,000 over budget, Simon and Claire from Surry. Yes: it's going to rain. No: you can't fake Italian marble with particle board and acrylic paint.

McCloud's cynical voiceovers hold Grand Designs together, like some noxious glue. "What do you do when you find a grotty little house that's in the middle of nowhere?" he asked in the season three opener, inspecting the site of John and Terri Westlake's future dream home in Peterborough. "Never mind the house is a derelict wreck. This is where they want to live."

"Beth and Andrew are 'francophiles,'" McCloud explained during a particularly controversial 2016 episode. "The chic streets and avenue of Gay Paree are where they come for design inspiration… now Beth and Andrew hope to bring a little parisien je ne sais quoi to South London. To their derelict wreck."

My god, it's glorious.

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And underpinning every cutting McCloud aside is a truth that's been too long ignored by lesser home improvement show hosts, like The Block's Scott Cam or Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen of Changing Rooms. That truth is that DIY sucks. And that you should definitely, definitely just hire a professional to do the job.

In no way does 14 years experience as an IT manager qualify "Peter from Kent" to project manage the painstaking restoration of a 14th century heritage listed building. Why does "Lisa from Stoke-on-Trent" feel confident that the plans she drafted up on MS Paint are in any way a substitute for hiring an architect? Who are these arrogant baby boomers and why can they afford a house while I can't?

Maybe this is the centre of it: Grand Designs is essentially an exercise in taking rich boomers down a peg. Every flooded underground garage and misplaced load bearing wall is the millennial's revenge. No wonder the show's theme song summons a sense of calm in anyone under 30 that's almost unparalleled.

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But Grand Designs' indisputable anti-baby boomer subtext only serves as further proof that Kevin McCloud's charisma is literally impermeable. He is the baby boomer we cannot hate. In fact, he is the boomer we all hope to become—deeply weird, and aware enough to know spending million of pounds and years of your life on a house made entirely of straw bales is insane—rather than inevitably morphing into our parents.

See, Kevin McCloud lives in a 500-year old house he thought was haunted by ghosts and so had an exorcist come over to cleanse the building. ("I was away when he actually came, but he used bells and cymbals and stuff… It seemed to work.") He has been to Ikea exactly once (I went out of curiosity. I bought a rug.") Apparently, he smells like pee when it rains, because his expensive suits are made the traditional way, which includes "soak[ing] the cloth in urine as part of the dyeing process." He has a car that runs on rapeseed oil, because he cares about the environment. And what does he dream of at night? "Things I couldn't possibly recount," he told the Independent. "Cesspits, sex, the terror of exclusion and humiliation."

All of this is irrefutable proof that Kevin McCloud has a soul. And, it follows, that he is the greatest host in the history of TV**.

Follow Maddison on Twitter (especially if you are Kevin McCloud). Don't @ me Scott Cam fans.

**Except, of course, for RuPaul.