The premise of Alan Carr’s Interior Design Masters is simple: 10 talented designers compete for a life-changing contract. Each episode, Alan Carr and interiors guru Michelle Ogundehin challenge the designers to redesign various spaces, from hair salons to restaurants to showhomes. While the designers showcase their passion and dazzling designs, not all makeovers are warmly received. Comedian Alan Carr has revealed that when a client is unhappy with the results, the team will redecorate afterwards. Speaking as a guest on Richard Osman’s podcast The Rest is Entertainment, Alan was asked by the former Pointless host: ‘What happens if the makeover is awful? Does the production company pay to put it right?’ Alan replied: ‘Yes, sometimes the people who own the shop or hairdressers or the hotel room really hate what they’ve done. What we do is we go back and paint it back to how it originally was so no one is offended.’ This practice is in contrast to earlier interior design shows like “Changing Rooms,” where participants were left with the results regardless of their satisfaction. Mariana Hyde, who also co-hosts the podcast, commented on how interior TV shows have changed over the years. ‘In the old days with things like Changing Rooms, I think they just left you with it,’ she said. ‘I think you had to sign the release form and, no offence to the designers in that because there was always that incredible time pressure element, they had to, like, glue gun and staple gun a lot of stuff… and people were left with these things!’ She recalled an interview with a woman who was so horrified by what her neighbors had wished upon her in one of those shows that she decided to research how to put it back herself and ended up becoming an interior designer! This isn’t the first time that secrets of an interiors show have been exposed. In the past, those who have worked on shows such as 60 Minute Makeover – in which a house is transformed in, you guessed it, 60 minutes – have revealed that it’s all a ‘lie’. Professional builder Craig Phillip – who won the first-ever series of Big Brother and also helped on 60 Minute Makeover – claimed once that it’s all staged. He told the Daily Star: ‘It happens in the time that you see us recording it but it’s the planning and preparation off camera that you don’t always see to make us be able to do it in that time frame. Let’s face it, what you see in the house happens in the 60 minutes because we shoot it in two 30-minute halves.’ The former reality star added to the outlet that work would already have been started before the cameras started shooting. ‘For example, for a kitchen, we are ripping out a kitchen and we’re ripping it out on camera, they only need to use 20 or 30 seconds of that kitchen being dismantled. So off camera, we will go in, we will isolate all the boarded stuff, the electric, the gas, the water underneath disconnect it, put caps on everything, making sure it’s all safe. The kitchen tops, we would have loosened all the plugs and undone all the legs.’ He joked that ‘on camera when they blow the whistle and we start and we go in and look like we’re Superman’. While Alan Carr’s Interior Design Masters and 60 Minute Makeover may offer entertaining makeovers, it’s important to remember that the results may not always be to the client’s liking. The production teams behind these shows take steps to ensure that any dissatisfaction is addressed, but it’s always advisable to approach home renovations with careful planning and realistic expectations.
Alan Carr’s Interior Design Masters: What Happens When the Makeover Goes Wrong?
