There’s No Place Like Home

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1. Last week I visited my friend Pete in the new home where he lives with his wife and daughter. Pete used to spend his holidays travelling the world, visiting the pyramids in Egypt or scuba diving in the Caribbean. Nowadays he prefers to spend his holidays and weekends making his house look more beautiful. Like hundreds of thousands of other British people, he’s discovered the joy of DIY (Do It Yourself), which means if there are any things that need fixing around the house, he will try to do the job on his own. On Saturday morning he’ll visit his local DIY store, get out his toolbox and settle down to work on his next DIY project.

2. As he proudly showed me the new kitchen he’d put together by himself and the newly painted walls, I asked Pete where he got his inspiration from. He told me that his favourite source of ideas was a DIY programme on TV.

3. This got me thinking about the enormous popularity of DIY programmes in the U.K.. Each major channel has at least one home or garden makeover show and there’s even a satellite channel entirely devoted to the subject.

4. I guess it’s not really surprising that DIY programmes are so popular. Two common sayings in Britain—“an Englishman’s home is his castle” and “there’s no place like home”—show how important our houses are to us. With the current economic downturn, many people can’t afford to buy a bigger house so they are looking at how they can make their house better without spending a lot of money. DIY is the perfect option.

5. So, what DIY programmes are on offer on TV? The most successful was called Changing Rooms. It had 10 million viewers and the basic idea of the show—in which neighbours do up each other’s houses with the help of two designers—was sold to more than 20 countries. Currently, the BBC offers DIY SOS on prime-time(黄金时间段的) TV. The show is a winning combination of friendly presenter and jokey builders who brighten up people’s lives by repairing their DIY mistakes. This week the team helped a family who had started to build extra rooms on their house but had run out of money. The family’s three daughters had been forced to live in the tiny spare room for the last four years, but DIY SOS saved the day, giving the girls each a stylish bedroom and helping the family out of a very stressful situation. My favourite DIY programme is 60 Minute Makeover. The challenge is to redecorate a number of rooms in a house in 60 minutes. The owner of the house is sent out for the day not knowing that their house will be completely transformed when they come back.

6. There are several stories of DIY TV’s own botch jobs. On one episode of Changing Rooms, a room was built to display a large collection of expensive teapots. Overnight, the shelves collapsed,

destroying the valuable collection. On another famous episode, when the designer brought the owner in to see the redecorated room, she shouted, “Why would I want this in my room?!”and burst into tears.

7. And have I ever been tempted to try some DIY? Well, the thing is, I’ve seen the statistics. I read a report that said over 230,000 people were injured while doing home improvements in the U.K. in just one year, including 41,000 who fell off ladders and 5,800 who were seriously hurt by hammers. So no, I won’t be going down to the hardware store. I’ll stick to watching DIY on TV with a nice cup of tea, thank you very much!