No.1 for Interviews - Colin and Justin
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“We all should get to the point where we’re happy...”
Colin and Justin have long been making our homes happier places with their interior design know-how but the boys don’t want to stop there when it comes to being happy
They are Scotland’s irresistible interior design duo who have been making our homes into our own private idylls since they hit our screens in shows like Trading Up and How Not To Decorate.
Being pigeon-holed however, is so not Colin and Justin and so they have often transferred their enviable energy and talent to many a-different thing including weddings, in Colin and Justin’s Wedding Belles, farming, in reality TV show The Farm, and most recently, to surviving in the jungle with hardly any food and a bunch of crazed celebrities.
Yes, we’re talking I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. In the Australian outback they encountered many challenges, including the Queen of Clean Kim Woodburn and Jordan of the Jungle herself, Miss Katie Price.
The biggest challenge however, was yet to come: Colin was voted out before his partner of 25 years, Justin. Just how did they cope on their lonesome?
Looking back on the jungle now, was it a good experience?
Colin: I think we both enjoyed it. It was the most extreme form of weight loss just before Christmas! I lost 18 pounds and Justin lost 28!
How many people get to go to Australia and actually sleep in the rainforest? Although the rations were really meagre, we were really lucky that the people we were with were fantastic. It wasn’t about people being nasty, or sniping or playing up to the camera it; everyone was very genuine, which was incredible.
There were times though when some people looked a bit trying. Kim Woodburn for example…
Justin: Kim was a real eye-opener for me. We have been doing Home Heist in Canada for the past few years and the sister show to Home Heist is called Kim’s Rude Awakenings, so she has worked with the same production company as us in Canada. We have known her for three years and she has always been fairly pleasant and easy going. In the jungle she said that I had no right to walk around with these moles on my face – that I have had since I was a child and that have posed me no real problems in my life. She said I should go to a surgeon and get them cut off.
I found that really rude of her. I remember thinking at the time, ‘What do I do? Do I stand here and say, ‘Okay, you big peroxide blonde, Bet Lynch transvestite,’ or do a treat it in a more gentlemanly way?’ I took the higher ground and I think it worked because she was winning at that point by 5:1 and then Ladbrokes slashed her to 50:1. I was told that that comment and the way I reacted stopped her winning and got me further into the contest. I think I handled it correctly and didn’t rise to her bait.
Were you quite conscious of playing a game while you were there?
J: Not at all. People said to us before we went in there, “You boys will be ridiculous because you’ll just open your gob all the time.” We replied that we would always remember there are cameras there but you don’t – you forget so easily. After the first few days you become immune to the whirring of cameras and just get on with it.
C: By about day four you just become so obsessed with food, because there is none, that you don’t have time to think about cameras. They are really strict about that: you don’t get any additional portions at all and so obviously your body is changing and you have periods when you are so lethargic and don’t have any energy at all – and all the mood swings that go with that.
Colin you were voted out first, were you disappointed?
We said from day one that we would split our vote. If you think about it, if you are a fan of Colin and Justin you are a fan of two people. The day I went out we were the bottom two and then we knew that the other person would benefit because our fans would think, ‘God, we have to look after the other one!’ Which is kind of what happened.
I was there for just over two weeks and two weeks away from life is a long time. If you are away on holiday you are still kind of in touch – people still check their emails and their phones. You don’t even have a watch in the jungle and I personally found that quite difficult. But it was a useful thing to do because you do a appraisal of what really matters in your life.
It was fortunate for me because I got to spend some time in the Gold Coast, do some reporting for GMTV and some canvassing for Justin.
Justin, were you quite jealous of Colin sunning himself and having a nice holiday without you?
I think I was. There were two sets of emotions going through my head. The first one was: I don’t know why I didn’t go before Colin and the second one was: I might as well go and make the best of it.
We went in as two and we came out fighting as two because any benefit that I would accrue would be shared with Colin, professionally. I was jealous though, because I knew he would be having a really good time with our friends for however long I remained in there.
For the first couple of days, I didn’t really know what to do but eventually I felt really comfortable in there and I began to feel that I could do quite well. I got to the semi-final and went out as number four. I knew I wasn’t going to win it, I knew that Gino [D’Acampo] would win it from the beginning, so I didn’t want to become one of the final three. If you become one of the final three, you are with the winner in the final episode and you lose all your press momentum as well. As number four you get a whole day of press to yourself, rather than sharing it. I was aiming to be number four so I was really pleased.
Why did you think Gino was going to win?
C: We have worked together in the past, we both design ranges for Matalan, so we know him well. He is just a lovely man. His wife is adorable, his two kids are gorgeous. He’s such a great bloke and he totally deserved it.
Did you miss each other when you were apart?
C: Totally. That was the weird thing – all of our other life adventures we have shared together and we share the post-mortem; we get to sit down together and discuss what was good and what wasn’t. It was weird seeing Justin on TV and I wasn’t there.
So do you think, professionally, it was a success?
J: At the end of the day, it was a really good chance to do a really good show that we loved doing. It’s been such a press monolith for us and has created such a lot of opportunity. It worked really well for us.
We have been making loads of television for North America but our profile had come down in Britain a little bit because we had been away for so long. So we thought it was a brilliant way to get us back in front of British television commissioners again. It’s worked so well – we are having back-to-back meetings in London.
That was one of the main reasons we did it but also to experiment with our own minds to see if we could do it. I’m 42, and I wondered if I could still do extreme things and push myself.
How did you cope with the bush tucker trials?
J: It was something I had never done before, to endure an extreme sport as it were. It was pretty full on: being chucked into this pond full of awful things that can tear you limb from limb. I was just determined to get those stars.
C: Even getting there you have to do something, you can’t just walk into camp: I had to chuck myself out of a plane. It was really scary but fabulous: terrific and horrific at the same time. We are trying to get the diary together to do another one.
It was so exhilarating but no one tells you that as you are falling, someone will appear from nowhere! All of a sudden there’s a cameraman in front of you – it’s so weird to bump into someone at 10,000 feet!
J: A lot of people, after shows like this, grumble about it and they find things to take fault with. For both of us, it was amazing. Who wouldn’t want to be well-paid to go across to a country they haven’t been to before, for a month, to stay in a luxury hotel and then a jungle. It’s too good an opportunity to miss. At this age, to go on a crazy kids’ adventure, camping outdoors with a crazy bundle of people is brilliant.
C: It just reminds you that you’re alive. I think we are lucky that actually we are quite like that: even in later years we are out there, going to Canada, making new programmes, starting a new life there and working on both sides of the Atlantic. We have been so lucky because it’s paid off and we get the best of both worlds and exist in both countries.
And then Jordan arrived! What did you make of her?
C: We didn’t know her before she came to the jungle. I didn’t have any expectations of her and we’ve been away so much that we weren’t so aware of everything that had been going on with her and Alex and Peter.
We just try to take people at face value: she seems to be a strong-minded gal who knows what she wants. You get the impression that if she were a man, she would be lauded as being a hardcore businessman around. People think she’s a bit of a bitch but maybe it’s just because she’s a girl that people have this kind of attitude towards her or maybe she was a bit of a bitch? I don’t know but she wasn’t a bitch to us.
J: We got on really well with her. She is definitely a force to be reckoned with: a heat-seeking missile in slingbacks. She knows exactly what she wants and she knew exactly how to make every opportunity work for her.
We have kept in touch with a little bit by text. She invited us to her New Year party in Brighton but we couldn’t go because we were at a New Year party up here.
Professionally for us, her being on the show brought an extra two or three million people to the show. All of a sudden there are two or three millions more than the seven million that was expected. Therefore, there was a bigger market, learning about us and becoming fans of us and learning a little more about what makes us tick. It reminds people that we are here. I think for us, it gave us exactly what we needed to say, ‘Remember us! We’re back!’
Were you ever worried that it could backfire?
C: It’s a risky thing, going into a reality show because you have no idea how they are going to edit you. It can backfire big style, not just a tiny little blip. Massive points to ITV because they showed Colin and Justin the couple, not sensationalised, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God we’ve got gays here!’ They just showed us getting on with it and interacting with everyone.
Actually the feedback we’ve been getting since then is that actually, you know what, kids love us, mums and dads love us, straight boys… they have all just commented on what great characters we are and what a nice couple.
The other day we were having our breakfast in Mayfair in London and theses builders were sitting there and this bloke said, “So you’ve been together for 25 years?” He just wanted to talk about our relationship and his marriage. He wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, you’re a gay couple!’ It was more, ‘You’re a long-term couple. I’d like to talk to you about that.’ That is so Colin and Justin because we have never been about being gay, we are about personal liberation and being yourself. Your sexuality is just a part of you, you should just be accepting and celebrate who you are.
It’s like the whole coming out thing as well. We are going to a coming out party – I think straight people should have coming out parties. We should all get to the point where we are happy about who were are.
J: We are who we are and we don’t go out of our way to portray anything else.
C: We are not The Waltons, we are like any other couple: we have good days and bad days.
See Colin and Justin this Spring on 60 Minute Makeover, ITV 1, 2pm and check out Colin and Justin's Influence home collection at Matalan
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