Building Britain's Superhomes, review: charmless and gaudy – and that's just the property developer

"People come to me because my houses are the best f---ing houses, basically… They know it’s going to be a big f--- off house.” Meet Guy Phoenix, star of Building Britain’s Superhomes (Channel 4).

Phoenix does indeed build very large houses, of the kind favoured by footballers: shiny surfaces, cavernous spaces, champagne rooms, you know the sort of thing. If your idea of cosy living is a terminal at Dubai Airport, Phoenix could be the property developer for you.

As long as you don’t mind relinquishing control, that is. Phoenix prides himself on being “possibly the only developer in the world who builds houses of this value without a full set of plans. I can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to look like, I can’t tell you how much it’s going to cost, but I do tell you it will be f---ing fabulous”.

Have you noticed that he swears a lot? It seems to be his calling card. I suppose it worked for Gordon Ramsay. The makers of the show appear to think he’s a great character. Perhaps his clients do too. “Do you want the good news or the good f---ing news?” he demanded from a chap who had come to check on the progress of his house in Nottingham. The owner suggested a couple of ideas of his own; Phoenix was not having it. “This is why I don’t allow f---ing customers to come to f---ing houses!”

The show made some half-hearted efforts to inject some jeopardy into the building of Phoenix’s latest project – they installed some big windows, which is always a high stakes moment in Grand Designs – but really this two-part programme is just an advert for Phoenix’s business. He took us to his home in the south of France (it comes with a housekeeper so capable that “he can fire a f---ing space shuttle”), mentioning that it is available for rent. He gave us an extensive tour of the multi-million pound house he built as “a little bit of Monaco in the East Midlands” which has “135 places to sit”, wallpaper at £300-per-roll and a helicopter pad. Like its builder, it was somewhat charmless.