Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

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Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (born 11 March 1965 in London) is an English interior designer and television personality best known for his appearances on the BBC television programme Changing Rooms. He is noted for his flamboyant personality and for affecting a dandyish appearance. He is sometimes credited as "Laurence Llewelyn Bowen" [1], and the components of his name are frequently misspelled "Llewellyn" [2] and/or "Lawrence" [3].

Educated at Alleyn's School in Dulwich, Laurence graduated from the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1986 with a Fine Art degree. He subsequently worked for the Harefield Group of Companies and the interior design firm Peter Leonard Associates. In 1989 he started his own design consultancy. His wife Jackie, an author, had heard through her agent that a production company was searching for a designer and in 1996 he appeared on the first episode of Changing Rooms. He and his wife have two daughters Cecile (born 1995) and Hermione (born 1998).

He has also presented a three-part BBC special Taste (2002), about the history of interior design, and in autumn 2005 he began presenting the weekly BBC1 travel show Holiday 2006. His books include Fantasy Rooms: Inspirational Designs from the BBC Series (1999), Display (2001), "Home Front": Inside Out (2002), Design Rules (2003) and A Pinch of Posh (2006) co-written with his wife, Jackie. He has also made a guest appearance on Changing Rooms' American counterpart, Trading Spaces.

In March 2005 he starred in a one-off mockumentary as a prospective candidate for Parliament. His party, the Purple Party, "lobbied" for a restoration of Britain's heritage, and several extreme architectural measures such as tearing down all buildings that did not conform to their surroundings.

In January 2006, he and his wife Jackie were offered a place on the Valentine's Day celebrity couples edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. They appeared on the show managing to reach the £1 million question, before answering wrongly and losing £468,000. For the first time ever, Celador let Laurence and his wife retry the show after the company claimed that the last question "didn't meet their standards". After returning and being shown a different £1 million question, the couple decided not to risk losing £468,000 for the second time, and won £500,000 for their chosen charity, The Shooting Star Foundation, of which Laurence and his wife are both patrons. This amount is the highest that any celebrity couple has won on any British edition of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. The £468,000 they originally lost was also the greatest loss ever seen on the show, and to date, no other contestant has answered the final question incorrectly. The allegedly misleading question was "Translated from the Latin, what is the United States motto?". The answer given was "In God we trust" which is original English and has in fact been the US motto since 1956. The intended answer had been "Out of many, one" which is a translation of the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, which is not actually the current United States motto.

In November 2007 he and his family were featured in the Living TV series To The Manor Bowen. The designer created a line of wallpaper in collaboration with the British Home Decor Company Graham & Brown. He used this collection of wallpaper to decorate his home that was featured in the television series. This is the newest of two wallpaper collections with Graham & Brown. [4]

In December 2007 he and his family took part in the ITV1 game show All Star Family Fortunes.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife Jackie are ambassadors to the aid agency CARE International UK and in February 2008 visited the cyclone-hit areas of Bangladesh.

Laurence and wife Jackie are also active patrons for children's cancer charity CLIC Sargent.

He is known as "Larry" to his friends, in homage to his great hero Laurence Olivier.


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