Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud says ‘huge errors’ were made building ‘saddest home ever’-Josie Copson-Entertainment – Metro

The ‘saddest house ever’ made ‘huge errors’ (Picture: SWNS)

Grand Designs is known for its incredible architecture and ambitious builds, but it’s also forever linked to the ‘saddest house ever’.

The memorable 2019 episode, hosted by Kevin McCloud, focused on Chesil Cliff House owned by Edward Short, who shared his intention to transform his family’s 1950s home located in North End, near Croyde on the North Devon coast into a lighthouse-style mansion.

The initial plan was to complete the project in 18 months with a budget of £1.8million. However, when Kevin met Edward he’d already been working on the home for a decade. It earned the ‘saddest’ title as Edward ended up £7 million in debt, and his 20-year marriage to his wife Hazel came to an end.

In 2022, the property finally went to market for £10 million, but the price of the eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom, six-reception room property was quickly slashed.

Kevin, 64, has spoken about exactly what went wrong after spending ‘100 hours’ with Edward.

He has summarised that Edward ‘made huge errors’ and was ‘guilty of overreaching,’ but praised him for his integrity, which is how they made an episode that’s still spoken about years later.

Kevin has spent a lot of time with Edward (Picture: Channel 4/Rob Crawshaw)

‘I know him very well now. We talk off air as well as on and I like him a lot. I speak here professionally as a broadcaster, we wouldn’t have had such a memorable set of films or original film were it not for Ed’s honesty, his absolute integrity,’ Kevin shared to LadBible ahead of the Grand Designs Live exhibition. As well as the original episode, Kevin revisited Edward three years later for a follow-up on the home.

‘His honesty and his integrity kind of drove the show. In the original film at the end of it we say this is a story of hubris, it’s a story of overreaching, it’s a story of somebody’s life falling apart, their relationships falling apart,’ he recalled.

‘And he got all that, he was the first to say that. So it didn’t make it hard for me to say that in the closing moments of the film, I didn’t feel I was betraying his trust, because he was so open and transparent.’

The property is now completely transformed (Picture: Channel 4)

Edward had many issues along the way (Picture: Channel 4)

He added that Edward was a ‘great’ person who ‘demonstrates how resilient human beings can be’.

Some of the common mistakes he witnesses on the show include not hiring good people to help, and for trying to create something that is too ‘grand, silly, overblown, over glamorous’.

Last year, Kevin told Metro.co.uk he was pleasantly surprised the Channel 4 programme which sees him visit different building project sites right from the blueprints and following them to their completion stage.

‘I am amazed that I am still alive, that the show is still being commissioned, and that we get the diversity of projects we still do,’ he laughed.

Kevin is pleasantly surprised Grand Designs is still going (Picture: Jacqueline Cross)

When he first began filming, he didn’t know how they’d find a diversity of stories to cover if they continued for more than one series.

‘When we did the first series, the producer John Silver and I looked at each other and wondered if we would get recommissioned and if we did, where would we find the projects because we thought surely we covered everything… after six episodes,’ he recalled.

‘Now, we have a policy of not repeating ourselves, which makes it a bit harder to find the projects, but they roll in and its great because we can pick stuff that we like and that is still exemplary.’

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – that applies to houses, and TV shows!

Grand Designs is available to watch on Channel 4

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