Nick Knowles admits DIY SOS fan reactions ‘forced him to make a change’

As far as TV miracles go, DIY SOS is in ready supply of them.

For one thing, the BBC show’ manages’s ability to corral a fleet of electricians, plumbers and builders into one place for a steady period of time is some feat when finding a tradesman to take a look at the radiators can feel like chancing on water in a desert.

Then there’s the fact that DIY SOS accomplishes builds that would normally take a year (typically extended to nearly two with spiralling costs) in a matter of days. Even the builders on the show don’t know how they do it, Nick Knowles tells Metro.

But the biggest miracle of them all is who this is all in service of. The latest Children in Need special sees Knowles and his crack team take on one of their most ambitious builds to date: a desperately-needed expansion for Cheshire children’s cancer support charity The Joshua Tree.

A job that would have required the centre to close its services for months on end was instead completed in 12 days, thanks to the BBC show.

Getting the builders in is always a fraught affair, but when you’re working up against a deadline of children diagnosed with cancer needing to get back into the centre, it’s also a hugely emotional one.

BBC viewers often comment on DIY SOS’s heart-wrenching moments – like when one of The Joshua Tree project volunteers revealed his son, who had been diagnosed with leukaemia, had used the centre before his death.

Knowles, 63, says filming the show is just as moving as it sounds, but while he’s now known to show quite naked emotion in front of the cameras, it wasn’t always the way. 

He explains: ‘For years, the biggest question I got asked was, “How do you manage not to be emotional at those reveals when everybody else was being emotional?” 

‘The truth was, I did. But I would ask the directors not to include me in that edit because, for me, that end piece was about the people that had the thing built, that needed it, and the people who built it for them. That was a moment for them.’

But it became increasingly apparent as the episodes went on that the audience was confused by Knowles’ stoicism, presuming he had failed to connect with the story. ‘In actual fact, I just felt that I wasn’t the story,’ he tells us.

Another aspect that has started to shift as the show has gone on is the degree to which they take viewers behind the curtain of what Knowles dubs ‘the circus that rolls into town’ – complete with a catering truck, portacabins, JCVs, dumper trucks, flatbed trucks, cranes and hundreds of vans.

Whereas DIY SOS might once have whipped up a building in a matter of days without a bead of sweat, the show now wants to convey the real ‘stresses and strains’ behind the scenes.

The demands of the job are something Knowles and his team are only now really sharing with each other for the first time. ‘I admitted to the guys at work a couple of weeks ago that on the way home, I quite often pull into a service station on the motorway and go to the far side of the car park and have a little cry,’ says Knowles.

‘It helps to get it out of the system. Chris [Frediani] and Billy [Byrne] both said to me that they do the same. We’ve worked together for 26 years without mentioning this.’

It’s as emotionally taxing as it sounds. So why does he still do it all these years later? The answer is as touching as the show itself. ‘When my dad was ill, before he died, I found it difficult to go and see him, because his illness made him very emotional and that wasn’t my dad. My dad was a very stiff upper lip kind of person,’ Knowles says.

‘I struggled with that and then when he passed away, I realised what a useless son I’d been. I hadn’t seen him as much as possible because I found it difficult. I think I spent the last 30 years trying to make up for that a little bit.’

Now in its 33rd series, it’s remarkable to hear that DIY SOS very nearly finished as soon as it began. The way Knowles tells it, the BBC didn’t know what to do with it at first, having hoped it would be a bit closer to Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s Changing Rooms. For two shows in the same TV genre, they could not be more different.

‘My team were a bit more… I don’t know how to put it really – agricultural, rather than TV-friendly,’ says Knowles, a smile in his voice as we speak on the phone. 

‘So they didn’t like it and then they didn’t put it out for about six months. Then when they did put it out, it did something like 8million viewers, at which point they decided they liked it a lot after all and we should make some more.

‘Television quite often tries to control the situation and squishes the originality of it because they don’t want to scare the horses. Actually, the programs that do well are the quirky ones that have something different about them.’

Over our conversation, it becomes apparent that Knowles’ thoughts on DIY SOS and its place in the TV landscape are a good stand-in for his own relationship to the whole of showbiz.

Having started out as a runner, before working up the newsroom to a presenting gig, Knowles wears his non-celeb bona fides proudly (albeit having done a short-lived Strictly stint). There was only one other famous name at his June wedding to wife Katie Dadzie, 35, instead celebrating his nuptials at Braxted Park, Essex, with a mix of schoolmates and TV friends from behind the camera.

‘I think presenters can get a bit carried away with themselves, but you’re only as good as the team that you’re working with and the team that makes DIY SOS is an amazing group of people,’ he says.

With so many years in the bag, what does the show’s future look like now? Knowles insists it’s ‘straightforward’: as long as viewers stay tuned in and the BBC wants to continue making it, he will be part of the fold.

DIY SOS is the first thing that goes into his diary and everything else has to fit in around it. ‘For me, long after everyone’s forgotten who I am and has forgotten the name DIY SOS, those buildings will still be there looking after people,’ he says.

‘The way the world is, everybody seems to be at everybody’s throat,’ he adds. ‘In actual fact, in communities, there are more good people than bad and they’re all trying to get on with their lives. 

‘When our shows go out, it reassures people that the world is a bit better place than they thought it was.’

DIY SOS and the Children in Need special are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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