PROPERTY programmes are not a rarity, so it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. Thankfully, as regular viewers are already aware, Grand Designs is something special.

Although the homes tend to be out of the financial reach of most people tuning in, watching them being built is always fascinating.

Even presenter Kevin McCloud never grows tired of the show, which he’s been hosting since it began in 2001. “Doing these programmes is a dream ticket for me,” he says. “I started by pursuing a career in music, then I went to Cambridge to take a degree in languages, which quickly changed to philosophy, then finally to the history of art and architecture.

I then retrained as a designer and led two weird, parallel lives designing both in the theatre and in people’s houses.

“I’ve designed exhibitions, graphics, product and spaces, settling eventually – for no particular reason other than people bought the stuff – on lighting and furniture. I enjoy it all.

“I also enjoy the performing that TV entails.

I’m a jack-of-all-trades and everything I’ve done has revolved around people’s homes and the way they use them.

Television seems the perfect place for me.

It suits all my unfocused interests and amateurish enthusiasms.”

So why does he think the programme has been so successful over the years, and does it serve a purpose other than to merely entertain? “The most important piece of architecture any of us ever experience is the home we live in. If Grand Designs can do anything, it can at least raise the level of our awareness and especially our expectations of the quality of the buildings we live in.”

The criteria for choosing whose project is featured is simple. “We generally try to pick projects that we think we are going to like , but the more diversity I see, and the wider range of building types, the more I appreciate that what we want and need is diversity.

“I’m not equating taste with quality here. You can have a beautifully-made building, very well-crafted, that you may not like. But other people might. Who’s to say whether it’s a good or bad building? If it’s done with conviction, if it’s beautifully designed, if it’s beautifully crafted, then it’s a good building.”

This week, McCloud is in Scotland to meet flying instructor Colin Mackinnon and his partner, hovercraft instructor and trapeze artist Marta Briongos. They own their own airfield and want to build a metal sculptural home on the land adjoining it. It’s already an ambitious project, but when the Northern winter begins to set in, work becomes almost impossible and it seems their dream could be over before it’s really had a chance to begin.