By taking a plunge into celebrity culture, Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces is TV gold and offers lots of stylish interior ideas to steal.
If you think you’ve seen too much of Dermot Bannon, think again.
In an era where home shows have become so polished that they look like sets, this opens the door to personal spaces where Dermot’s relaxed interview style delivers great viewing results.
Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces gives Ireland’s favourite architect free rein to explore some of the country’s best-known celebrities and ask them the questions we all want answers to.
There is plenty of product placement throughout the home segments.
Vogue’s chalk stripe sofas, part of a collaboration with EZ Living Furniture, get camera time, but so does the very deft work of interior designer Geri O’Toole of Geri Designs, whose own floorfiller collection for Rugs.ie is shown in her home, and who also counts Rosanna Davison amongst her celebrity clientele.
Her own home also features in this first episode of a two-part series.
Andrew Porter’s gym is included, and so is Don Mescal’s work live space, Quivvy Church Studio.
Dermot is in his element. He gets super excited about the shadow gaps in Vogue Williams’ Howth house, something her husband Spenny, when he appears, doesn’t ever seem to have ever noticed.
The bunk beds and built-in joinery throughout is beautiful, as is the Italian vintage pendant lighting overhead and the much-shared fluted pink kitchen.
The screen grabs shown here don't do the TV show footage justice.
But it is Bannon’s utter ease with all that makes this a watch.
He is totally himself.
Seeing him and Vogue duck from the sprinklers on the flat roof, there ot keep the seagulls off, is TV gold.
In jewellery designer Chupi’s home, we get to see her embellishment of her Victorian home.
It is a homage to the metal she works with.
With the help of designer Po McNamee, there’s gold leaf on the stair risers, on the door to the return and as a half-moon-shaped bed head surrounding her quarters.
The kitchen has mirror-polished brass cabinet fronts, finished by Elements of Action.
A man whose songs have featured on albums with sales of over 22 million worldwide and have received in excess of 18 million hits on YouTube, songwriter Don Mescal’s work has been recorded by artists including US Country superstars Rascal Flatts, Backstreet Boys, Geri Halliwell, Sharon Corr, Christy Dignam, Cliff Richard and Lulu.
Also, a music producer, Don, splits his time between his own studio in a 1800’s converted Church, on the banks of Quivvy Lake, in Co. Cavan and Nashville.
And on a sunny day, Dermot knocks on his door, where Don greets him in a linen shirt and a pair of sunglasses.
Inside the ambient space is voluminous, the building's original leaded glass windows still in situ and lots of white sofas marking out the lounge area in a somewhat low-lit space.
There are candles everywhere.
Some of Mescal’s collection has Dermot breaking out in hives.
There are three motorbikes parked within the place and many, many lamps, repurposed from items he has picked up on his travels.
A saxophone has found a second life in illumination, as has a former fire extinguisher that came out of an old theatre.
It’s refreshing to see homes with stuff in them.
It is theatrical and very much imbues the spirit of its owner, who gently woos Dermot with his own take on things.
A mezzanine level is home to two bedrooms, one of which is the principal.
Where Dermot would have installed roof lights, curtains draped like sails hang overhead.
This is an acoustically interesting building with loads of gorgeous period features that doesn’t have a big glass box extension.
A baby grand piano is on what was the altar, and the small kitchen, green with black countertops, is in the vestry.
Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter opens the door to Dermot as a proud dad with his son, Max in his arms.
The home he shares with his wife Elaine, has a good room, a balanced space where there is comfortable seating, complete with karate chop cushions and backlit, built-in bookcases.
Andrew isn’t allowed in here much because he says he’s messy.
You get way more sense of the man when you get to see his gym cum workroom, complete with an ultra-tidy tool bench.
Dermot, himself quite the fitness fan, tries to lift a set of weights and struggles. Porter lifts it as if it were a cardboard prop.
In a 2020 diary for The Irish Times, he talked about his then new house, where he had his gym equipment: a squat rack, bars and plates, all supplied by McSport.
“This probably says a lot about me, that my first bit of furniture, before chairs, beds, tables or anything is a squat rack.”
You also get to see inside his newly opened gym, Three State in Dun Laoghaire, where he and Dermot chat in the sauna – Dermot has one in his own back garden – and immerse themselves in the cold plunge pools afterwards.
Aalto Saunas supplied the sleek spaces while G O’Neill Fabrication installed the ice baths.
The last home show in last night’s broadcast was that of Geri O’Toole of Geri Designs, whose clients read like a who’s who.
She’s very grounded and shows what the home, set on three sides around a courtyard, originally looked like.
It really demonstrates her vision and capabilities when you see a photo of pig sheds with a rusted corrugated roof falling in as a before shot, and then wander through it with Dermot.
This is not all of the house, but the kitchen area and library cum entrance hall.
Raising the roof level, it allowed her to install clerestory windows on one side and bring in a full wall of glass at the gable end.
It gives you the best of both worlds: lots of light, but also privacy and wall space to put furniture against and to hang art on.
It is very well laid out with a secret door taking you to the original main house, now the accommodation quarters, where there are three bedrooms, including the principal, where Geri has set a long, slender bolster atop the bed.
All this leaves you wanting to see more. And there is a second episode, Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces airs Sunday, May 3rd on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
