Outrageous Homes, review: tedious zaniness made bearable by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

Llewelyn-Bowen visits Dawn in her Treasure Island-themed home - Channel 4

An Englishman’s home is his castle – or, in the case of the late playboy publisher Felix Dennis, a 12,000sq ft pretend pirate ship with an indoor crow’s nest and a hatch in the ceiling to facilitate escape via hot air balloon. This Warwickshire pile with a Treasure Island theme is now owned by a woman called Dawn, and it is the property that opened Outrageous Homes (Channel 4).

This is a series presented by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and thank goodness for him, because his tone – halfway between admiration and mickey-taking – is the only thing that makes it passable.

I love Llewelyn-Bowen because he is determined never to take things too seriously, and the homeowners seem to be in on the joke. Dawn drifts into shot on an inflatable flamingo. Did I mention that the house has a swimming pool in the middle of the living room? With palm trees? Apparently, Dennis had the fronds preserved in embalming fluid mixed with green dye. He also installed several pirate mannequins in the bedroom, which adds a creepy funfair vibe.

It goes unmentioned in the programme, but the house is up for sale at £3.65 million (down from nearly £10 million when it was advertised in 2015). No word on whether Dawn is taking the pirates with her.

Caroline, in her mosaic home - Channel 4

After this property, the others featured in the programme were positively boring by comparison, although I developed a soft spot for the man who said: “I woke up one morning and I thought, ‘I want a Western ranch!’ One chap had a lot of fish tanks. A woman covered every available wall space in mosaics. Another had a busily decorated but otherwise unremarkable house, and the talking point was that she has a bright orange fridge (unplugged) in the bedroom, in which she keeps her underwear. “We’ve got a fridge in the bedroom,” Llewelyn-Bowen said of his own home, “but it’s full of gin, not pants.”

The kiss of death for this show is that too many of the contributors are “you don’t have to be mad to live here, but

it helps!” types. The viewer’s sympathy is with a husband who retreats from the madness of his wife’s decor to

“the room of shame”: a beige oasis with magnolia walls.

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