You don’t have to be an interiors fanatic to want a good gawp at statement homes, and for two decades Grand Designs has given us our fix.

Ordinary people going for extraordinary home improvements have not only kept us hooked, but we also like to chuckle at the enthusiastic yet unsuspecting people who get it wrong.

The classic routine of ‘run out of money, end up living in a caravan for two years longer than planned and have a small meltdown’ is brilliant telly, and host Kevin (well-equipped as a qualified architect and designer who got the gig after a guest spot on 90s BBC show Homefront) can convey what we’re all thinking with a signature deadpan look.

And we never tire of watching him be adamant a project he seems to hate ‘will never work’, then beaming that he ‘loves it’ at the end.

Bless him.

We’ve seen castles, farms, treehouses and spaceship-style homes and despite the disasters, good ol’ Kevin is there to guide them and get them to the breathtaking finished product.

Congratulations!

It’s really crept up on us.

We will be raising a glass.

When Grand Designs first started I thought one man and his dog would watch it and that we would run out of projects.

Here we are, 190 projects on.

How much has GD changed?

Remarkably little.

The colour is better on film.

Looking back it was a bit grey.

The only thing that’s gone grey in the meantime is my hair.

But it feels like a lifetime ago… thank goodness I’m still alive.

I wasn’t a young man when we started.

It’s been 22 years of filming, but I am as excited and naïve about it all now as I was then.

You must be an expert at spotting when people are going over budget now…

The problem is nobody uses a quantitative surveyor, because they think it’s too expensive.

They just say, ‘Oh, it’s going to cost this much’, but they don’t even believe it themselves.

I give the builders a hard time about it.

The only reason I ask people how much it’s going to cost is because the producers demand it.

It’s pointless, because it’s all about how much money people want it to cost, rather than how much it actually will cost.

But of course when they go over budget it is entertaining.

Do you ever lose your patience with the designers?

I find it frustrating, but it’s not my project.

It’s annoying when something goes wrong that could have been avoided.

But it would be so dull if it was all perfect.

Part of what makes it so watchable is seeing other people screwing up.

You can be stern with people, ever had a falling out?

Sometimes I have to work hard not to fall out with people and try ridiculously hard to bite my tongue and maintain good relations.

Often it’s like talking to somebody from a fundamentalist religion.

No matter what you say, they have an answer and ignore you.

I can say anything to them and they say I’m wrong and I think, ‘You’re doing it for the first time and I’m on the 180th project, so I can’t be wrong.’

They continue their self-righteous path.

That’s what self-build does to people.

Are you constantly window shopping, while seeing beautiful homes every day?

I’m interested in the technology that goes into the building.

I spend entire days with people in their new homes and sometimes I think, ‘I could live here’, but it’s rare.

I’m more interested in home improvements because that talks about taking your life as it is and improving it, rather than just acquiring something.

I don’t do soft furnishings and cushions, I love the adventure that comes with adding light, space and storage.

What would be your dream home?

If I find a site I love, I’ll probably design and build a home.

I can think of half a dozen things I’d like, but I definitely need an outdoor place to sit and look at the sunset…

The biggest thing I’ve learned from doing this show is that architecture can empower people.

Kevin talks through his top design picks…

Angelos cave

Not an exceptional building but an exceptional story.

A man with MS who used the process of stretching and carving and digging as a way of strengthening him through his illness.

It was remarkable. It was a unique one-off thing.

It wasn’t a building-it was a hole in a cliff which he was enlarging into a man cave.

There is nothing in the planning guidance despite the hundreds of volumes of reference work about caves so the planners were unable to tell him how big to make it.

Once they’d given him the consent to live there he could do what he wanted and it was one man, one hammer, one hole in the ground.

It was so primal.

The Isle of Wight house

It was a 1960s bungalow that they re-clad, kept the interior and added to it.

It was a little museum to 1960s living with a modern extension behind it.

It was a really exciting project.

It was a lovely example of recycling and using recycling stuff.

Vaulted Kent House

Richard Hawkes is a real pioneer of sustainable technology and has become an expert on how to make that sort of thing work in the countryside.

His house is extraordinarily ambitious and even had locally made tiles.

It’s a great project with amazing ideas.

The stilt house

In the intersection between a power grid and the canal. Because it was up on stilts you didn’t have any visible foundations.

The idea was that you could repair a canal boat in the house but it was only one bedroom and very small.

The highlight was a very special big balcony that wrapped all around it.

Being outside on the verandah was just as enticing and lovely as being inside the building.

It was a really nice example of what was just enough space, beauty and craftsmanship can create- a gorgeous little thing.

The Essex Barn

This design was two very brilliant artists who both taught at the Royal College of Art.

You can imagine that what two artists did with a barn- not conventional.

It was full of bonkers invention and I just loved it.

Shipping container house

Patrick Bradley! I saw him last week actually.

It was a lovely poetic story because it was about stitching architecture into the landscape of Northern Ireland.

It was about recycling materials and building sustainably.

It was about how you could make the building fit the place very lightly and delicately.

The Peckham house

This was earlier on in Series 2 or 3 with Monty and Claire.

Monty, right from the start wanted to produce something that was tidy and tiny and laden with tech and ideas.

He had a bed that turned into a bath and a cupboard that turned out to be a toilet which had a basin on the back of the door.

He designed an amazing house.

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