{"id":419087,"date":"2026-04-26T22:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T22:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419087\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T22:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T22:49:08","slug":"when-dermot-bannon-met-vogue-williams-and-her-naughty-artwork-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419087\/","title":{"rendered":"When Dermot Bannon met Vogue Williams and her naughty artwork \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sensitive viewers may have a sinking feeling a few minutes into Dermot Bannon<\/a>\u2019s Celebrity Super Spaces (RT\u00c9 One, 9.30pm) when Ireland\u2019s most famous home renovator and his host, Vogue Williams<\/a>, dissolve into giggles at the mention of Vogue\u2019s \u201cWillyman\u201d.<\/p>\n

This turns out to be a mildly naughty artwork of a man (plus appendage) that has pride of place in influencer Williams\u2019 living room in Howth \u2013 a splash of end-of-pier froth amidst the supernova of pink that is Vogue\u2019s vast Dublin Bay getaway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Willyman\u2026\u201d says Vogue. \u201cThe what\u2026?\u201d sputters a baffled Bannon, who adds, \u201cShow me the Willyman.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing well for himself,\u201d says Vogue as they take in the artwork. Yes, it is going to be a long evening in the Bannon-verse.<\/p>\n

Or not. Vogue\u2019s willy wobbly wonder art is as ropey as things get in a briskly watchable new series that finds Bannon dipping a toe in the world of the \u201ccelebrity hang\u201d, a genre pioneered in the late 1990s by Louis Theroux and which, in Ireland, has already produced such guilty pleasures as Lucy Kennedy\u2019s Living With Lucy.<\/p>\n

Here, the vibe is Bantering with Bannon \u2013 and if the results are slight and disposable, Bannon and his interviewees are good sports all. Smartly, Bannon does not outstay his welcome. Having swooped in on Williams and her husband Spencer Matthews (who waddles through shirtless), he\u2019s then off to meet jewellery designer Chupi Sweetman, who lives in a south Dublin house with a gold staircase and whose mother \u2013 writer and activist Rosita Sweetman \u2013 resides in a charming flat in the basement.<\/p>\n

Then it\u2019s to Cavan and the converted church belonging to Ronan Keating<\/a> and Nathan Carter<\/a> songwriter Don Mescall. Bannon does not mention this, but in a previous life, the chapel at Quivvy belonged to Dead Can Dance\u2019s Brendan Perry and served as the recording space for the goth duo\u2019s 1993 masterpiece Into the Labyrinth \u2013 a piece of Irish music history that seems to have been chucked into the void and forgotten.<\/p>\n

After that, Bannon heads to Limerick<\/a>, where he meets designer Geri O\u2019Toole, who helped Vogue Williams design her 3Arena-scale kitchen in Howth. It is a lesson in how the other half lives, with O\u2019Toole revealing that for many clients, money is no object but that infinite choice can bring its own headaches. \u201cThat would terrify me,\u201d says Bannon. \u201cWhat would happen when the world is your oyster?\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9<\/a> could have kept churning out new seasons of Bannon\u2019s blockbusting Room to Improve until the sun turned into a red giant and consumed the Earth. So you do have to credit the broadcaster for trying something new with Celebrity Super Spaces. Here is feel-good filler that has no huge aspirations but which makes for amiable Sunday-evening window-dressing. It is the Vogue Williams pink countertop of television \u2013 a bit much, really, but perfectly pleasant for a quick visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sensitive viewers may have a sinking feeling a few minutes into Dermot Bannon\u2019s Celebrity Super Spaces (RT\u00c9 One,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-419087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}