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the environmental JAMster

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Dean BedfordJan 24, 2008
 

 
JAM semi-regular Marcus Brigstocke goes green

Why comedian Marcus Brigstocke spent £100,000 on an eco-makeover

When Marcus Brigstocke moved to a family home in Wandsworth, he decided
to go eco-crazy – only without the 'look at me' wind turbine

Interview by Rosanna Greenstreet
Wednesday, 23 January 2008

Marcus Brigstocke, 34, is a regular on BBC TV and radio. He spent
several years as the 'angry young man' on the 'The Now Show', has made
three series of 'Giles Wemmbley-Hogg Goes Off' and of 'The Museum of
Everything' and hosts a weekly BBC4 satire show, 'The Late Edition'. His
DVD 'Planet Corduroy' is on sale now

Two years ago, we moved into a 1930s four-bedroom semi in Wandsworth.
The people who lived here before built an extension with huge glass
windows looking on to the garden. The extension is a lovely open area –
it's where we have the kitchen, sitting room and dining room. So even
though the garden's quite small, the house is a decent size.

The kids – Alfie, two, and Emily, five – are on the top floor and have
their own bathroom. My wife, Sophie, and I are on the middle floor,
where there's also a spare bedroom that doubles as a massage studio,
because Sophie's a massage therapist. Also on the ground floor is a
separate playroom for the kids, and there's a loo and a corridor with
more cupboard space than you could possibly imagine.

The main thing we've done since we got here is making everything green.
It's an agonising financial experience. We've spent about a hundred
grand. But that's not just on going green – a lot of that is making the
house exactly how we wanted. We decided to wait until we could afford to
do the whole thing, and then get builders in for the minimum amount of
time. We thought they would be here for two months, but they came in
August and they're still here.

Of course the thing you really want when you're eco-ing your home is a
wind turbine on the roof that says to everybody: "Look how virtuous we
are!" It's the David Cameron approach to going green. The reality is
that you have to change your lightbulbs, and put little silver screens
behind all the radiators to push the heat into the room – ie, nothing
that anybody will notice. Unfortunately, going eco is not really
supported by the Government. You pay VAT on having your windows
double-glazed as a luxury, when the only reason we've done it is to use
less energy.

All the materials we've used have been meticulously researched. The
kitchen's been completely redone with wood from sustainable sources. We
gave the old kitchen away via Freecycle, which is brilliant if you want
to get rid of anything, from a minidisc player to a complete kitchen.

As for the paints in the house, I don't know what chemicals they did and
didn't have in them, but they have the lowest impact on the environment.
Our style is Wandsworth neutral or Nappy Valley cream. When you've kids
doing fingerpainting and bringing home handprints every single day, you
really don't want a huge amount of brightly coloured, expensive
wallpaper.

We've aimed to make everything as simple as possible. We've a triple-bin
system for recycling, compost and waste. In the playroom, the light
switch was behind the door, and we'd leave it on all day – so we moved
the switch, and now it's second nature to make sure that if someone's
not in the room, all the lights are off. In the playroom there's a
fireplace with a chimney balloon. If you have open chimneys, you're
blasting whatever heat you have straight up the chimney. You inflate a
special balloon, push it up the chimney and finish inflating it through
a special tube. At Christmas if we want to light the fire, we can take
the balloon out – it couldn't be simpler.

We don't have a freakish fridge, just a well-insulated one that uses a
low amount of energy and is a fridge/ freezer so we're not powering two
separate units. All the sockets are accessible. They don't scream,
"There are sockets everywhere!" but they're easy to switch off. The
dishwasher switches off completely, so it's not on a standby setting.
The only thing that stays on permanently is the Sky Plus box. I daren't
switch that off – can you imagine the chaos?

We are in a privileged position: I've had a good couple of years with
work and we've been able to spend on things like having as many of the
light switches separated as possible, so we only have on what lighting
we need. We have solar panels, and are having photovoltaic panels fitted
as soon as we can get hold of them, but the demand is very high. They
are full-on energy-producing panels – they will run your lights for you
and contribute to the national grid. You can get photovoltaic panels in
the UK but the waiting lists are long. Also, the Government has set a
cap on grants for installing them, at the same time as saying, "Yes, we
are taking climate change seriously!" I am getting my panels in from a
Chinese plant, the only one in the world with a really solid eco-record
for making them. A lot of these things you buy thinking, "Yes, that's
the right thing to do", and then you find out that the carbon footprint
caused by construction and transport makes the action useless.

I hope we'll be here for long enough to make it all pay. We were living
next to Battersea Park before. I've always loved the park, but it's
dogshit central. One of the things that turns me into a grumpy old man
is seeing people let their dogs crap all over the place. We had Emily
while we were there, and the house was big enough, but only just.
Basically, for every mile that you move further from central London, you
get an extra foot; so I think we won ourselves three extra feet by
moving to Wandsworth.

 
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