Banjo Beale is a natural raconteur. He has a delightful knack for weaving a story that keeps the listener rapt, whether it is imparting a pet hate of podcast-length voice messages or sharing his passion for upcycling everything from old doors to pottery drying boards.
The Mull-based interior designer, author and presenter first burst into the public eye in 2022 as the winner of the BBC makeover show Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr.
Beale, 39, has since gone on to host his own series Designing The Hebrides which, newly returned for a second run, sees him devise a raft of ingenious ideas to breathe fresh life into ailing buildings across the Scottish islands.
He has also become a familiar face on our TV screens as one of the resident judges on the hugely popular Scotland’s Home of the Year, alongside fellow interior designer Anna Campbell-Jones and architect Danny Campbell.
This month sees Beale publish his second book, A Place In Scotland. It is a volume packed with stylish and intriguing properties, ranging from castles and drovers’ cottages to a tiny tenement, five-star hotel, historic pub and even a former air control tower.
“I just got home yesterday,” he says. “I’ve had a pretty crazy month. I finished filming SHOTY [Scotland’s Home of the Year] for next year and ducked down south to finish off a few of my projects there.
“I then dashed home because I have the homing beacon after a week away and I just needed to get back to, well, I should say Ro, my husband, but it’s my animals really - I missed little Grandpa. We are cosied up together now.”
Beale talks with such fondness about his adopted home on Mull that if it wasn’t for the Aussie accent, you’d think he was a born-and-bred Scot. He originally hails from a sleepy town in the Australian Outback, around five hours west of Sydney.
In 2014, Beale and Ro bought one-way tickets to Sri Lanka and began backpacking around the world. The couple fell in love with Mull and became good friends with Chris Reade, who founded Isle of Mull Cheese with her late husband Jeff in the mid-1980s.
She offered them the lease on The Glass Barn, a former village hall incorporated into her Sgriob-ruadh Farm, which had previously been used as a greenhouse for growing herbs.
Beale found himself with an exciting project on his hands, a blank canvas to hone his craft as he filled the space with an ever-evolving array of curios variously upcycled, reimagined and repurposed.
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This transformation saw The Glass Barn hailed by Conde Nast Traveller in 2021 as one of the “most beautiful restaurants in Scotland”. Then came Beale’s successful stint on Interior Design Masters and from there his career soared.
The two years since have been a busy blur, with his hectic schedule showing few signs of abating. Is Beale getting much downtime, or is he simply riding this wave of success?
“I’m riding the wave,” he confirms. “At the start it was overwhelming and ever so slightly exhausting. I kind of had a moment where, probably at the beginning of the year, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe this is the new normal?’
“I know that on screen, I come across as this really relaxed and calm guy - I think it is partly to do with being Australian - but I’m called ‘Banjo’ because I’m highly strung and tightly wound. So, I have been working on going a bit easier on myself this year and enjoying it.”
The idea for his book, A Place In Scotland, was inspired by many of the locations and interior design gems he has encountered on his adventures. At its heart, Beale ponders the question of what is contemporary “Scottish style”?
To that end, he believes there is a quiet-yet-boldly confident revolution under way. “I do think something is happening here, but people haven’t really been taking notice,” says Beale. “It kind of took me on a journey. My little grand tour.
“Travelling around, I realised a few things which I talk about in the book. The first one is a connection with nature. All of our spaces, particularly the most successful ones, are embracing the location that they are in and reflecting the outdoors.
“A lot has to do with history too. People are bringing that back to life and respecting the past. There are amazing spaces like castles, restored bothies and a former Second World War air control tower where the history has been interpreted in an interesting, modern way.”
“I also saw lots of humour in the spaces. I think we don’t take ourselves as seriously here and so that was definitely a huge thing I noticed. The final one was definitely neighbours, looking to Scandinavia and seeing the ‘Scandi-Scot’ aesthetic.
“The biggest part of the book was curating it, finding those spaces, connecting with the people and sharing what the vision was. I started with about 60 and then whittled it down to a mix that I thought was strong and told an interesting story.”
Asked about his favourites, Beale admits to “a soft spot” for HMS Owl, a four-storey brutalist brick tower on Fearn Airfield at Tain in the Highlands.
Built in 1942, it was one of Britain’s most important naval airfields during the Second World War, with the Barracuda Operational Training Unit and the No. 2 Torpedo School both sited there.
The tower was closed in 1957, falling into disrepair until new owners Justin Hooper and Charlotte Seddon spent five years painstakingly renovating it into a family home, a labour of love that involved excavating a foot of cow dung before work could begin.
As Beale writes in his book “keeping its industrial feel and making it a warm space was the biggest challenge of all.” The final result sees crumbling concrete pillars and exposed brickwork, juxtaposed with leather and wooden furniture, large rugs and plenty of cushions.
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“It is such an original and unique building,” says Beale. “The way that [the owner] Charlotte has brought that to life is quite incredible.”
Any others he is fond of? “I love Bluebell House, which is a colourful place and a nice antidote to lots of the other more natural and serene stuff,” he says, referring to an Arts and Crafts property in Bearsden. “It is bringing the outdoors in but in a really colourful, bold way.
“It would have to be a toss-up for the third, but I love Rodel House on Harris. It is perched at the end of the earth. It belongs to the owner of Isle of Harris Gin and was painstakingly restored. The house has been resuscitated. It has such an amazing history.”
All of the spaces chosen “highlight sustainable design and represent a considered style that can be recreated at home”, something important to Beale’s own ethos as an interior designer.
“For me, it doesn’t matter if you live in a castle or a hut, you can still achieve a certain look,” he says. “If you don’t have beautiful stone walls in a castle, you can limewash a wall, which is a lovely way to bring texture and make it feel like stone.
“I think highlighting old buildings is another version of upcycling and repurposing. Lots of these buildings have been rescued from ruin and none of them have been filled with things that are straight out of Ikea.
“They have used a mix of old and new, they have character and provenance. With HMS Owl, for example, all of the stuff is second-hand, but it still manages to look curated and cool.”
His own style is a keen magpie’s eye-meets-make do and mend. “I have always loved vintage, but it was probably not until I moved to Mull that I really understood how important it was,” says Beale, referring to his staunch doctrine for sustainable design.
“I know not everyone lives on an island, but even if you do have access to stuff, I think it is good to break that circuit before you run out and buy new.
“We are all addicted to convenience and low-cost, instant gratification but if we can just be a little bit more patient and collect what we need over time, use what we do have, then I think we will be better positioned to not ruin the planet.”
It sounds like he was born for island life. Is that something Beale felt clicked when he arrived on Mull? “That’s why I called my book A Place In Scotland because I found my place,” he says. “I found myself as well.
“I found my place and my people here and I found my purpose. Which is a nice thing. I don’t know if I was searching for it my whole life, but I hadn’t felt the sense of home before.
“Where I grew up, I always wanted to get away, as you do when you’re a kid. I wanted to leave. I didn’t care where I went. Apart from my family living there, who I love and miss, I just never really felt quite at home anywhere.
“So, I found it here,” he reiterates, the joy in his voice. “It is not for everyone but when you understand the rhythms and that things are a little bit slower, that you need to be more mindful of how you live, then things make sense.
“When I cross the water on the ferry, it is a literal wave of relief that washes over me and the feeling of not being tethered to the system.”
Earlier we had touched on the pitfalls of modern communication. “I have no phone reception at my house,” he says. “I basically have no one in my phone and I never answer the phone. It is such a generational thing now, not wanting to talk on the phone, just wanting to text and stuff.”
It is autumn when we speak. When he is working on interior design projects and devising them in the Scottish summer months, does Beale have to factor in how his creations are going to work within the dwindling daylight hours and often-gloomy skies at this time of year?
“I loved when I learned the word ‘coorie’ because it just sums it up perfectly,” he asserts. “For me, lighting is really important and making sure everything feels warm and using colours that are rich and enveloping. White just doesn’t work here and neither does grey.”
I’m curious whether Beale thinks he would have had the same kind of career if he’d stayed in Australia. Is there something special about the light and colour palette in Scotland that connects with him?
“It is funny because Australian style is quite bright and light and white,” he says. “We really don’t explore pattern and are not very adventurous with colour. We are good at texture, wood and light stone. My style was very relaxed and neutral in Australia.
“But when I was a kid, I painted my bedroom a dark green and then a few weeks later it was a dark blue. So, I have always loved those rich, saturated colours.
“When you live here [in Scotland], you spend so much time indoors and it is about bringing all those beautiful colours inside. Whereas in Australia, it is about throwing open the doors and living outside.”
“I might have cleaned it out pretty well for my new series of Designing The Hebrides,” he says, with a wry and slightly sheepish laugh. “Ro is really cranky at me because I used so many things that we had an eye on for our own place.
“I have been collecting doors and old patinaed wood and lots of treasures for years. Then I did up an apothecary on Harris for my show and I used all of the doors for that.
“I’m super proud of it. I think it is the best thing I have ever done. But I used all my doors. So many beautiful things like Sri Lankan tea-picking baskets and an old mechanic’s pigeonhole.”
Surely, though, space in the hangar is a positive: it means he can start to source new treasures? Beale concedes this might be true.
“I have just brought home 30 Georgian sash and case windows from a big townhouse project I’m doing in Bath. So, Ro is happy about that. We are going to make a greenhouse.”
When it comes to must-have materials, his motto is “the more warped, wobbly and rusty the better”, or as he elaborates: “I’m fond of patinaed copper and I love any wood that is more than 100 years old.”
This reminds Beale of another anecdote which has seen him in the doghouse lately. “I had acquired hundreds of drying boards from an old pottery in Stoke-on-Trent and then I used them on a pub in Easdale, which Ro was cranky about as well,” he says.
“They are 150-year-old planks of beautiful timber, which have all kinds of marks where cups and plates have been sitting on them to dry. It feels like driftwood. And it is actually cheaper than new timber at the hardware store, which is crazy to me.”
Asked about other aspirations and he has no shortage of ideas. “I would love to write a children’s book because I know I have that in me,” says Beale. “I would also love to go back to Australia, just for a jolly, not to move, and do Designing The Hebrides but in the Outback.
“Do you know the movie [The Adventures of] Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? I have a vision of getting on a bus with some drag queens and going to do up pubs in the Outback.
So, I might manifest that because they are making a sequel to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and that feels like good timing. I would love to do a show in Australia and go round with [Scottish drag queen] Lawrence Chaney to do up pubs in the bush.”
A Place In Scotland by Banjo Beale, with photography by Alex Baxter (Quadrille, £35), is out now. Designing The Hebrides continues on BBC Scotland, Monday, 10pm and on BBC Two, Tuesday, 7pm. All episodes available to watch on BBC iPlayer
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