Featured Image Credit: Eamonn McCormack/WireImage/Getty Images/Channel 4
Topics: Health, Channel 4, TV And Film
Rhianna Benson
Topics: Health, Channel 4, TV And Film
Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud has opened up on the devastating impact of the death of a participant which occurred while filming the new series.
Speaking to press this week, McCloud - the designer and presenter that has fronted the Channel 4 series since its debut back in 1999 - admitted his sadness that not all the home renovation projects have gone to plan throughout the show's 20-year history.
In fact, McCloud recounted two 'very difficult' instances in which the participants died during the filming process, including one heartbreaking story from an episode that's yet to air.
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"We are doing a very difficult project right now," he told the New Zealand publication Stuff.
"We had no idea and neither did our contributors, but the husband fell gravely ill and has passed away during the filming process, and it makes the narrative very hard to graft."
"Because you think where do we go [from here]?"
Opting not to go into further detail regarding the heartbreaking case, the on-screen star spoke fondly of another participant that died while filming the life-changing show.
In an episode that aired in 2010, Nat McBride confessed when filming began that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer.
He died six months later, but his wife Lucie Fairweather decided to continue the renovation project in his memory.
Speaking of the loss, Kevin explained: "She and her young husband in their late 20s were going to build this beautiful little chalet bungalow with amazing architecture - he was a sustainability campaigner; she's a teacher."
He continued: "On day one he announces on camera that he’s got stomach cancer.
"He passed away six months later, and we had one day’s filming in the can.
"And then 18 months later, Lucy rang up and said, ‘I’m going to do this by myself’, with her two children."
"Sometimes you don’t know where [a situation] will go, and it can turn such a positive corner," Kevin went on, adding that architect Gerry Tate had 'held her hand' throughout the undoubtedly difficult process.
Lucie and Gerry later went on to win an award for their staggering new build in the wake of such tragedy as to lose Nat.
The news comes just weeks after host McCloud gave an update on the 'saddest ever' house he has worked on in the show's history.
In 2019, participant Edward Short hoped to build and sell Chesil Cliff House in Devon after the decade-long project left him in £7 million worth of debt and destroyed his marriage.
"He is still battling along with it," McCloud told Metro in October this year.
The impressive property was initially valued at £10 million, but was split in two earlier this year after failing to sell.
"We went back for the revisit which was great and rather redemptive and now I think it is still on the market. I haven't checked in with him recently, but he is hoping for a bite on the line as it were."