Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud 'doesn't care about rudeness in response to Covid'

Kevin McCloud has said he is not bothered about how rude he has been to people in the street, if he felt they were not respecting social distancing.

The 61-year-old Grand Designs presenter has been shouting out at the general public if they get too close to him amid the pandemic.

During production of the Channel 4 property programme, Kevin said that he had been very protective of the bubble they had created for the filming of the show.

He said: “It’s a big thing actually, because we’ve been filming since June and we’ve developed a protocol for all the various places, whether we’re filming in a building or outside, quite diligently.

“We have Covid compliance officers with us at all times, checking out here, making sure we are all being good.

“Also, I’ve got quite good at being rude. So if somebody approaches, I say, ‘excuse me back off! What do you think you’re doing? Be Covid compliant'”.

He continued: “I’m quite bad walking down the street now. I tell people off. You can now, I can be completely anonymous in a hat and a mask.”

Grand Designs first aired in 1999 and more than 200 episodes have been broadcast.

Kevin, who has fronted the show since the beginning, teased a clash with a couple on the new series after he disagreed with their plans for an old biscuit mill.

He said: “A historic building’s character is basically made up of thousands and thousands of details of what it is, and if you start rooting out a little bit before you know it, weirdly you’ve ripped out everything and you’ve lost the character.

“And then you start to try and put it back in and it suddenly looks like a Disney version of what it was, and so anyway we don’t come to blows, but we have our differences of opinion, which is quite fun.”

*Grand Designs returns to Channel 4 on Wednesday January 6.

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