Home makeover guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen reveals how TV fame nearly destroyed his career

Home makeover guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has revealed how TV fame nearly destroyed his interior design career – by driving away high-end clients

Home makeover guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has revealed how TV fame nearly destroyed his interior design career – by driving away high-end clients.

The star, who returns in a revamped version of home-improvements show Changing Rooms on Channel 4 this summer, complained that rich customers thought his success on the original BBC version made him look ‘common’.

‘It meant my traditional portfolio of clients did not want to work with me any more. Some felt I had become a bit popularist,’ he said.

Llewelyn-Bowen, 56, recalled in the Reader’s Digest that the day after his first appearance on the show, a woman in Peter Jones department store thrust pieces of carpet and fabric at him and asked: ‘What do you think? Do you think they go together?’

‘I said ‘I’m very sorry, I don’t work here’, to which she replied, ‘I know you don’t work here but I saw you on television last night.’

‘I thought, ‘Right, OK, that’s what it is going to be like’.