In episode two, Dermot Bannon meets one of the funniest women on the circuit, but does how bold is her design? Joanne McNally likes colour. Lots and lots of colour. Dermot steps into the bright and brilliant home of Joanne, in Clapham London.
From here Dermot heads to Sadler’s Wells East, designed by O’Donnell + Tuomey. Opened in February 2025 as part of London’s East Bank cultural district, it is a civic building shaped around dancers’ needs, conceived from the “inside out”.
From a theatre in London, to a performer’s paradise in Dublin, Dermot visits Camille O’Sullivan and actor Aidan Gillen’s house. This house is a nine-yearr long labour of love that recently won the RIAI Public Choice Award. Camille and Aidan have brought this 1940s protected structure back to life from dereliction, reinstating it as a family home.
For some, spaces are there to be shown off, for others they are a private sanctuary. In this programme, Dermot gets to step inside the dressing room of Ireland’s favourite drag queen, Panti. Rory O’Neill allows the architect to view a treasure trove of drag couture. Rory tells Dermot “I spent so many years changing in disused kitchens, toilets, literally a cleaning cupboard. This space that I have now, is luxury”.
For his final stop, Dermot takes a trip to England, to visit one of the most exquisite gardens he has ever visited. Originally from Blackrock, Co. Cork, Clodagh McKenna now lives in a 300-year-old cottage in Broadspear, where she runs a 100-acre sustainable farm in the grounds of Highclere Castle in Hampshire.
Together with her husband Harry, dogs Alfie & Nolly, 10 hens, three ducks, three pigs and five Aberdeen Angus cattle. Over the past four years they have restored a one-acre, eighteenth-century walled vegetable and fruit garden, set up five working beehives, an orchard, a pickling and fermenting shed, and built the most idyllic forest bar in the land!
Dermot Bannon’s Celebrity Super Spaces airs on Sunday 3 May at 9.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player