Architect and TV presenter Hugh Wallace has lived a rollercoaster life, but despite all, he believes every cloud has a silver lining. Donal O'Donoghue hears his story.
"It’s a half hour romp," says Hugh Wallace of Home of the Year as if it were a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster rather than a reality show about fancy houses. And yet the architect, one of three judges on the popular TV show, brings such a jauntiness to proceedings that his larger-than-life personality is surely part of why we switch on.
Catch up with Home of the Year on the RTÉ Player
Hugh has lived a big life, the details of which the 67-year-old is not shy of sharing. His struggles with dyslexia and depression, living a double life back when homosexuality was illegal in this country (at the age of 20, he was briefly engaged to a woman) and his ongoing journey with alcoholism are all part of the picture. All of these aspects are poured into his kaleidoscopic character, a man who is as likely to call a show about houses a lively romp as recall with a tremble in his voice those dark days when all seemed lost.
Wallace is in his Dublin office when we speak: chunky red glasses framing mischievous eyes, paisley shirt flowering out of a V-neck jumper. It might be piddling down outside but the man’s a burst of eternal sunshine, saying how he’s off to Carrick-on-Shannon later to film the next instalment of The Great House Revival and how EXTRAORDINARY that will be. I’m thinking hold your horses there Hugh; what about your life as a HOTY?
Home of the Year is now in its tenth season, with Wallace a judge from the beginning. He’s aided and abetted by fellow architect Amanda Bone and interior designer, Sara Cosgrove. Yet Wallace is the star, cooing 'yummy’ and ‘delicious’ as he ambles from room to room. "I’ve looked at 225 houses in that time," he says of the show that’s a perfect fit for man with a personality as bold as his eyewear.
Last time we met, some two years past, Hugh Wallace was in the throes of building his own dream home with his husband, Martin (it will be his eighth home to date, he reckons, although in 2022 it was five, but hey, who’s counting?). "It should be ready for June, Donal, and you can come around for the party," says Hugh, which sounds like an offer one cannot refuse.
As you may know from his small-screen performances (apart from HOTY and The Great House Revival, there’s also My Bungalow Bliss), the man is ebullient company, someone who wears his heart on his tailored sleeve. "I’m not afraid any more to say how I feel or who I am," he says. "People can hold things in, and they shouldn’t." So it goes with his new home. "The only space I will get to leave my mark on will be the spare room, which will be a bit of theatre," he says. "Martin loves white, which is frightening."
He gives the elevator pitch for the new season of HOTY: the opening episode features an artist’s home in coastal Cork, a modern build with a grass roof in Co Clare and a black and white showpiece in Dublin. "In the middle of it all you will have Amanda, Sara and myself with the whistle," he says. Often, the two architect judges don’t see eye to eye. "Amanda wants to sit in a white room with a red chair, whereas I want a complicated room full of memorabilia," he says.
What makes a home for Hugh Wallace? "There was one house in Home of the Year where they wouldn’t let us bring water into the house and I was thinking ‘Ah lads!’" he says. "There are those ‘too precious’ houses where you’re afraid to touch the furniture but in other homes, there is such a great sense of family and warmth. Then there are homes that are all about memories."
Hugh Wallace grew up an only child (he would have loved a brother or sister) in the Dublin suburb of Dundrum. "It was a happy home," he recalls, despite an alcoholic father and being reared in a "Protestant bubble." "When my dad, Ken, stopped drinking, the whole atmosphere changed, our lives changed. That was an amazing period of my life but then my mum (Susan) died early in her life, and I felt so sad for my parents, that at the point where they had got it all together, Mum died.
"My dad never got over that. I found it very difficult to cope as well. My Mum was so supportive of Dad, an intelligent woman who never got recognised as such, but women usually didn’t in those days. I never really got to know my Dad until after he stopped drinking. I was 17 then and alas at that point I discovered drink myself and started on my journey."
Wallace was 55 when he first spoke publicly about his alcoholism. It was, he said, like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Some years on, he’s as passionate as ever about the subject, the zeal of a convert maybe, but also someone who for so long saw first-hand the impact of addiction on his own family, before he too fell into that spiral.
As a young man, he was also coping with being gay in a country where it was a crime and at school, he struggled with dyslexia, which had yet to be diagnosed. He says his diagnosis allowed him to park his ‘stupidity’ and independence. "I was driven not to rely on anyone else again," he said the last time we met, the student who was tagged to fail who went on to bag five Honours in his Leaving Cert. By then, he was already drinking.
"People come up to me now and say, ‘Thank you for talking about alcoholism,’" he says. "I believe that 20% of our population are silent victims of alcoholism, people quietly bearing the trauma of living with an alcoholic." Wallace himself went through rehab and therapy, fell off the wagon, got back on again and so it went. How is his relationship with alcohol today?
"I have the odd glass of wine but I’m very aware of the repercussions. I enjoy not having a headache, I enjoy time and alcohol eats up hours and hours of an alcoholic’s time each week. What a waste of energy, but that’s easy to say. When you’re in that place, it’s very different." When was the last time he had a drink? "Some time ago," he says without offering detail. "Let the alcoholic get on with it. They are on a journey and it’s so important that people around allow them that space."
Thirty-seven years ago, on St Valentine’s Day, he first met his husband, Martin Corbett (they married in a civil ceremony in 2012). In many ways, they are chalk and cheese, not least in the matter of interior design: Martin is a fan of white walls and clean lines, while Hugh likes, well let’s say, the opposite. Through the years they have had their ups and downs, as Wallace struggled with alcoholism, depression and a failing business, but through it all they endured.
"I’m very lucky to have such an amazing partner," he says. "What I love about Martin is that I’ll get into a flap, and he’ll go ‘This is how it is, get over yourself!’" Hugh Wallace getting into a flap? Hard to imagine. "I’m a flapper babe!" he affirms. "I over-analyse stuff, get anxious and sometimes I’m too direct. I tell things like it is. Maybe I should edit my comments, but mostly I don’t see the point."
I wonder if his own childhood – and relationship with his father – coloured his views on fatherhood and whether he had ever wanted to be a dad himself? "Circumstances never really allowed us," he says. "Martin would have loved to have a kid and he would have been a super dad, but unfortunately, we lived in a different time when we met. When we first met, we were illegal. Funnily enough, because we are now legal and homogenised, I think that the gay community has, to a certain extent, lost its passion and edge. When I think back on all the fashion designers and music people and artists who left their mark, so many of them were gay."
Sounds like Hugh’s a bit of a romantic? "Oh yeah. It’s also about respect, which is so important in any relationship and enjoying the little things. For Martin and myself, that can be something as simple as sitting together on the couch watching True Detective which we were doing last night."
He gets visibly emotional when recalling the low point of his life, the collapse of his business in 2009. "One of my darkest days was in Heathrow, returning to Dublin having just closed the office in London and watching the business disappear at home. I broke down in the airport that day. I was in such a black place. I was a basket case for six months or so. I took to the bottle, didn’t get up in the morning, and all the rest.
"Now I’m not suggesting that I was suicidal, but people did kill themselves at that time. I never considered that option, but it was a very dark time in Ireland." His eyes well as he lists the support of Martin as well as work colleagues and friends as helping him back from the depths after weeks and months lost at the bottom of a bottle. Now, like the musical has it, he believes that the sun will come out tomorrow – or the day after that.
"Opportunity knocks but you have to be open to it," he says. "The sun came up for me and I stopped drinking, and I got on the telly and the telly liked me. Opportunity knocked and I loved opening those doors." So now he’s counting down the months to living in his new home (he carries little from previous houses, apart from two pieces of furniture that once belonged to his mother, some books and paintings and a chestnut picked up during a magical walk with Martin in the Phoenix Park some 30 years ago).
And then he’s off again, back in the saddle, galloping towards the promise of tomorrow with The Great House Revival and a major restoration project of a bay of cut stone stables. "It will be," he pronounces in a voice that brooks no contradiction, "an architectural tour de force." Just like the man himself.
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