Instagram gets blamed for plenty of social ills but its biggest crime in my eyes is the hegemony of good taste it has imposed on everything from our coffee choices to how we decorate our homes.
How is anyone supposed to know what their own style is when they’re scrolling through hundreds of pictures every day?
So it is with high hopes that I await the return, after 17 years, of the animal-print soft furnishings and neighbourly animosity that is Changing Rooms.
Originally fronted by Carol Smillie, the programme’s legacy remains in a certain gung-ho attitude to DIY and several “worst reactions” videos on YouTube.
Now, the top interiors TV show of the Nineties and early Noughties has been given a reboot for the era of glass box extensions and mid-century minimalism, with the first episode due to air tonight — and in theory, I’m here for it.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is the only survivor of the original team but, with the king of maximalism on board promising to remove beige from British homes, my lust for bad taste and sadistic desire for big reveal tears should be satisfied.
And yet, having seen the trailer featuring new presenter Anna Richardson, competing designers Jordan and Russell aka 2LG studio, and all-too-competent-looking joiner Tibby on a set decorated with a scalloped rug and pastel walls, I fear I may be disappointed.
Rumours of an artwork made of hair aside, stills from the first episode of the new series suggest we can expect to see a lot of millennial pink and teal – harmless, if a little dated – but little that will stick in the memory for 20 years, in the way that Linda Barker’s destruction of one woman’s entire teapot collection has.
For that, we’ll have to make do with the re-runs.
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