Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s Changing Rooms regret and failed bid to get sacked

"Taste is subjective."

That's what iconic interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen took away from the early days of Changing Rooms, after several mortifying bad reactions from unhappy clients.

The series returns this week for a reboot on Channel 4, starring Laurence alongside with new presenter Anna Richardson, designers Jordan Cluroe and Russell Whitehead and carpenter Tibby Singh.

And fans of the original series which ended 17 years ago will remember the excruciating scenes when families were disappointed with their home makeover, some bursting into tears and running away,

But Laurence puts it down to his youth, lack of experience and reluctance to even be on television.

Speaking on This Morning, he told Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes : "In the early days in the first series, it was absolutely extraordinary.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and presenter Anna Richardson are fronting the new Changing Rooms reboot on Channel 4 (Jon Cottam)

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"Changing Rooms was the first ever reality show where that was allowed to happen. I absolutely remember the first couple of very negative responses."

He went on: "The children were very young, we were just starting out and I wasn't very keen on being on television in the first place and feeling a bit grumpy.

"Of course, this was before social media and we had huge, huge amount of letters of people writing in saying, "Well they may not have liked it but we did.'

"Suddenly you start to realise that taste is absolutely subjective. There's no such thing as a blanket good taste which fits everybody.

"And actually I thought, 'Well, in that case I'm going to use what I do on television to encourage people to do it their way.'

"I'm not saying my way is great - it's probably a lot better than the way they were going to do it themselves."

Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, Linda Barker, Graham Wynne, Anna Ryder Richardson, Handy Andy Kane and Carol Smillie in 1999 (BBC)

But the risk is all part of what makes the job so rewarding, said Laurence.

"I love the fact that people's expectations, when I walk into the room to be done...they know it's going to be taken somewhere they never would have taken it to themselves," he said.

"That might be a nice journey...but then it might not!"

One memorable disaster from Laurence and the team was teapot-gate, where interior designer Linda Barker was given the task of redecorating a South London flat.

She was instructed to display the flat owner’s expensive and sentimental teapot collection in a corner cabinet, but she decided to place it on a hanging shelf unit instead.

But in utterly horrific scenes, the shelves fell off the wall and collapsed on to the floor - smashing the £6,000 teapot collection to pieces.

And the iconic moment is referenced in the reboot.

"I take a moment to try and lay the ghost of the teapots just to see if we can move on," Laurence laughed.

"Again, this is the joy of the show. It's all about the experience of what people are doing."

The owner of the teapots, 75-year-old Clodagh, has since told the Guardian she harbours a grudge with Linda.

"I still don’t feel very good about her," she said.

"On the very rare occasions she’s on television now, when I do see her, she’s still very bouncy, and I just don’t think she earned the bounce."

At his lowest point on the programme, Laurence tried to get himself sacked, admitting he had "literally had enough".

So he deliberately planned such an unsightly renovation, he was certain he would be fired on the spot.

"I didn’t do anything apart from create an enormous Renaissance-style bed with nude figures supporting it, and ­sprinkled the floor with rose petals," he told the Express.

"I remember sitting there with presenter Carol Smillie. I was wearing a purple silk suit and I put loads of candles on the floor like a Sting video and she asked, ‘Where’s all the money gone?’ and I said, ‘Well, on the ­candles’, and that was it."

But far from eliciting a negative reaction - Laurence received the opposite.

"I believe it was one of the top-rated rooms they ever had," he sighed. "I sealed my fate."

Contemplating what made the show so popular, Laurence says it's the fact that anything could go badly wrong at any given moment.

"For the last 25 years I've been doing this all over the world and it's always so manicured and choreographed and you float down and everything goes right," he told This Morning.

"Changing Rooms is so rock 'n' roll, naughty and dirty, that actually if the paint doesn't dry, or the teapots breaks, that's at the centre of the show."

But this time around, the reactions from clients are even stronger.

"It is the most extraordinary series," he teased.

"I have never seen reactions like it. I think with the original series, sometimes people would be a bit tepid when they walked into the room.

"After 25 years of longing for it to come back, so much attached to it, and also these people are massive Changing Room fans, so they are not holding back on any level and that's constructively or less constructively."

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