Dermot Bannon may be one of the most recognisable faces in Ireland, but his children couldn’t care less about his celebrity status.
The beloved architect is finally back on our screens with his 15th series of RTÉ’s Room to Improve, which airs on Sunday nights at 9.30pm.
During an exclusive interview with Goss.ie, the 51-year-old opened up about fame and confessed he loves people “roaring things across the shop” at him.
When asked how it feels to have “fans”, Dermot said: “I don’t think about it, you can’t, it’s too uncomfortable. I just get on with it, and it [Room to Improve] goes out once a year and there’s a bit of noise about it.
“Most people I meet on the street, they love the show and it kind of means something to them… so if you can do something like that and it means something to people and they enjoy watching, its brilliant.
“But its funny because I’ve never felt like a celebrity, I kind of just feel like a local everywhere, because everybody is very familiar with me.
“They’ll always say ‘Hey Dermot’, like people call me my first name and they’ll roar things across the shop at me, and I kind of like that, it’s kind of like you’re known everywhere.”
Dermot and his wife Louise share three children together – Sarah, 19, James, 16, and Tom, 12.
When asked to share his children’s reaction to his fame, he confessed: “They don’t care. They really, really don’t care. To them its just dad’s job, and its boring and I’m boring.
“My own kids just really don’t care, they’ve grown up with it, like my daughter was three when I started Room to Improve, she’s now 19. So they just see it as a job, they really don’t care, they don’t talk about it, they barely watch it.”
Now in its 15th season, Dermot said its hard to believe the show has been running for so long.
“We’ve been making the show for 17 years, its actually the longest job I’ve had, and I suppose that is unusual in television because generally television is four or five years and then you move on to something else.”
“So I’ve been doing this longer than I’ve done anything else, so yeah, its a bit overwhelming!”
When asked to share the secret to the show’s success, he said: “It’s the homeowners. We get amazing people to take part in the TV show. They’re going through a very stressful period of their lives, they’re using all of their life savings and borrowed money on their homes…
“So for them its huge and following their journey as they go through a very stressful process, I think we all secretly enjoy watching that and we enjoy watching how they deal with the stress, the same way we watch dramas and stuff like that.”
“The people are just amazing, and how they’re willing to tell their stories and share what they’re going through. That is the magic and secret to Room to Improve.”
Dermot joked that he’d love to get “another 25 years” out of the show, but said he’d be proud of what they’ve accomplished if it was to end after 15 seasons.
“Every year I make the show as if its the first time, we get just as stressed, we get just as panicked, every time an episode finishes its the exact same huge sigh of relief when its done.
“So I suppose I put my 100% into it, and there will come a time when it won’t be on air… and when that time comes, it comes, but I won’t see that as a failure.
“To have a 15 year run, I’m very very proud of that, so however long it lasts, it lasts, and when its over, its over, and that’s all good.”
