I used to love going to parties, to meet new people and spend the night relaxing with fiends old and new. Now all that has changed and I dread spending a night at a dinner party. There is only one person to blame. Kevin McCloud.

Imaging the scene.  A dinner party in a leafy suburban street.  Guests are mingling and getting to know each other.  The talk is about who you know, the price of fuel and where you are going on your holidays.  I'm beginning to grow uneasy.  I can feel it coming.  It always does.  It's only a matter of time.

I'm feeling increasingly uneasy, I begin to fidget. I look around for an escape route or someone I know to talk to to avoid the question.  I'm beginning to sweat, I can feel it coming, then it does "so what do you do then?"

I panic.  I'm like a startled rabbit in car headlights.  Do I tell the truth or do I lie and make something up to avoid the inevitable.

My companion is looking at me.  What seems like minutes have passed.  Everything is in slow motion.  I need to answer. I decide on the truth. So I mutter under my breath as if I'm embarrassed and hoping they don't hear "I'm an architect" I say apologetically.

I'm now waiting for it.  It's only a matter of time. You could put your mortgage on it.  "An architect, how interesting.  You must love Grand Designs".    

At this point I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog day. All I want to do is either punch the person in front of me or scream and run right out the door along the tree lined street.

It starts with "did you see that house from Wednesday nights episode.....". I have already switched off and I can feel the life draining from me as my companion drones on. 

Now I hate Grand Designs with a passion.  I have no personal gripe with the programme or Kevin McCloud or that it has turned every thirty and forty something into a design expert.

To me Grand Designs is the TV equivalent of Ikea; some okay designs but mass produced and sanitised with little substance.

So my companion is still prattling talking about concertina doors and inside outside spaces. In my early days I would tolerate the conversation and I would chat along kidding that I liked the programme but I soon learned that people could talk all night about it.  I don't know why but they all turn into architectural critics.  Its like a busmans holiday to me. I get enough of this at work it don't need it on a Saturday night as well.

I have learned that there are two ways to tackle this dilemma and to avoid been caught in an architectural bad trip.

One way is to talk about design, not the rubbish you see on the TV but real design.  I talk about modernism and it's role is architecture in the 20th century. I wax lyrically about Daniel Libeskin and Deconstruction.  Then I move onto conceptual architecture and the works of Lebbus Woods.   This normally gets them running to call the babysitter or get a top up for their drink and find another victim and I'm free but no one wants to talk to the architectural bore for the rest of the night.

My other option is to tell the truth and just tell them that I don't like Grand Designs. You would think that I had just told them I was a serial killer by the look of disgust on their face. "you are an architect and you don't like Grand Designs?" they look down their noses at me.

My response has got them vexed. They cannot comprehend this. Their idea of the utopian design world created by Kevin McCloud and his programme has just been shattered by my revelation.  My views are middle class sacrilege. I'm avoided for the rest of the might.

So I find myself in a catch 22 no matter which way I respond. 

I long for the days before Kevin. When you talked about architecture with your peers and you did not meet armchair architects on a Saturday night.

Only once a surgeon I was talking to at a dinner party was on the same wavelength as me. After he asked what I did for a living and after receiving my response he said "I bet you enjoy Grand Designs as much as I enjoy Casualty?"

We didn't need to continue that conversation. We just smiled and raised a glass or two. Now that was a good night.

http://www.lawrencemcphersonarchitects.co.uk/