Kevin McCloud Quotations

When I left university, I idled around without focus for much too long.

If I welcomed people into my lovely home every week in the pages of a magazine, they'd soon see how incredibly dull it is. It's important to maintain a bit of mystique.

Luckily I have never missed a day's filming or work due to asthma.

What happened in 2008 stopped people in their tracks. People stopped looking at their homes simply as commodities to exploit and starting thinking about how they might personalise that space and make them less bland and more autobiographical, and that's healthy, I think.

Because I live in the countryside, I want a building which encourages me to have a fully formed relationship with the environment. It gives me an opportunity to not just be inside or outside, but in a range of contexts.

A friend of mine once wrote a silly article about all these metrosexuals like David Beckham wearing sarongs, and she described me as a 'heteropolitan.' I don't know what that means. I think it was a joke.

I'm quite shy. Television presents an amplified version of yourself. When I'm on camera I'm pumping more adrenaline, I'm being a bit more engaging than I am in everyday conversation, but that's normal, isn't it? Otherwise nobody would want to watch.

I am a big fan of long drop, composting toilets - I like the cycle of using waste. When you have experienced one and seen what comes out of the bottom, it is amazing stuff. It's the most beautiful, driest, sweet-smelling compost.

Self-builders are the adrenalin junkies of the DIY world; it's the equivalent of base-jumping off the top of the Gherkin to land in a paddling pool.

My father, an engineer, was the gentlest man I knew.