2 weeks Ago By Janet Christie
Who doesn’t love a nosey around someone else’s home? When it belongs to Scotland’s Home of the Year judge and interior designer Anna-Campbell Jones, the anticipation is high as I climb the steps to the imposing front door of her main-door tenement flat in Glasgow’s West End and an uplifting rising octave bell trills my arrival. Will it be minimalist, bohemian, rustic, industrial, mid-century, contemporary or traditional? Whichever, it’s definitely neb heaven. As it turns out what lies beyond is a wonderful mix of all the things Anna-Campbell Jones loves, with elements of all of the above, but the first impression is all about colour.
It starts with Campbell-Jones herself, who opens the huge red door and somehow fills the frame with splashes of various matching hues, from her peroxide halo of curls and sparkly spectacles, popping coral red lips framing a mega-watt smile, her coral, teal and white fish-print short-sleeved shirt revealing jaunty tattoos, and down to her coral print sock-it-to you hosiery. She ushers me along a vast turquoise hallway past ancestor portraits, huge Andy Warhol flower prints, an antique wooden barometer and 1970s Chopper bike to the light-filled kitchen at the back of the flat offering biscuits and beverages. Spring sunlight floods through the huge window frame drenching the table under a vibrant orange iGuzzini pendant light, bouncing off the stainless steel catering kitchen and green walls, and making a disco ball sparkle.
Tantalising knick-knacks and cool objects are begging to be touched but I’m only just in the door and on best behaviour for the longest-serving judge on the popular BBC homes show that returns for the first of seven 30-minute episodes in its seventh season this week. I needn’t be, for Campbell-Jones is fun, warm and welcoming like her home. She’s a ‘keep your shoes on or take ‘em off and dance around in your socks if you like’ kind of person.
We’re in the heart of her home at the kitchen table, next to the window seat where she’d place her own favourite spot red heart. “When it’s sunny I can sit here with the sun on my back, with my cat, coffee and newspaper, radio on, it’s heaven. The table that you sit round as a family or with friends is the heart of the home, whether you’re having a big slap up dinner or friends are round to talk through a problem.
Also if you’re having a party, you start in the kitchen, the fridge is there, the ice cubes...
” The disco ball...
For anyone who has been living off grid since 2019 and missed Scotland’s Home of the Year, BBC Scotland’s hit TV series, the show is all about discovering what makes a house a home. Homeowners from six regions have properties rated and each episode sees three homes rated by interior designers Anna Campbell-Jones and Banjo Beale and architect Danny Campbell, who choose one to go through to the national final in week seven. Each of the 18 homes, which encompass every architectural style from banging new builds and Victorian villas to bougie bungalows and trendy tenements with everything in between, is scored on architectural merit, distinctive design and original style.
Explaining the popularity of SHOTY, narrated by Anne McAlpine , Campbell-Jones hits it right on the nose. “I think we all love seeing how other people live. I think there’s a kind of noseyness, like looking through the windows like when someone’s forgotten to draw their curtains.
Also people watch to get inspiration because the sheer variety of approaches to what home means is just stunning. “I’m always amazed that every season the homes seem to get better and continue to be different. Every home is as individual as the people that live there so it’s almost limitless.
” “I believe a home should tell the story of the people that live there. It’s a bit like a biography and way of helping people understand who you are and what’s important to you.” So as we move through to the spacious front room, what stories does her home tell? Blush pink walls host a huge contemporary canvas by Welsh artist Sue Williams flanked on either side by portraits of her great-great grandparents behind two red leather Mies van der Rohe chairs.
‘Party battered’ black painted floorboards are softened by a lush black berber wool carpet, and sofas are piled with cushions including some from her dazzle ships inspired homeware brand annacampbelljones.com. On sideboards and shelves attention grabbing knick-knacks like a snappy brass crocodile nutcracker and a ceramic Staffordshire cat with a bow round its neck all have stories to tell, For instance why is her ancestor holding a sea shell? “He was a sail-maker, in Wales.
The number of Campbell-Jones’s that died at sea is hilarious. Well no, but it is funny with the ships and sailing, it’s in our blood. My dad was a very keen sailor, boats all the way,” she says, pointing out her grandpa’s cigarette boxes won for sailing on the Norfolk Broads.
Brought up in Hammersmith, West London by an architect father and nurse-turned painter and designer mother,, Campbell-Jones came to Scotland to study at Glasgow School of Art, and returned later to live in the city 25 years ago, moving into the house where she still lives and where she raised her two now adult sons. So what is it about this house that makes it a home? “The first thing I loved was the size and proportion. It was a fire-damaged shell and we couldn’t afford to do much so painted everything white and the floors black.
We only had one or two pieces of furniture in each room but as time has gone on I have accumulated things. My parents died a few years ago so some family pieces of furniture and art came here. “I’ve also got an eagle eye and found things in charity shops or back lanes or friends wanted rid of them, so over the years the home has accumulated objects and furniture and colour.
I have always loved colour but it took me a while to work out what would work and I’ve made some mistakes. This room was dark blue and didn’t work. So, experiment.
You can’t make a mistake with paint. You try it and if you don’t like it you can change it.” Campbell-Jones is a believer in the idea that we all have style within and if we like something it will work with what we already have.
“It’s about choosing something you really love and being honest with yourself about whether you love it or want it because it’s on trend. Everybody’s got that power inside and it’s not just colours, it’s textures and shapes and styles and eras and multiples of those and everybody’s got a different patchwork of those.” As she speaks Campbell-Jones moves her hands, embodying a spatial awareness and physicality.
“I love to wave my hands around when I’m talking, it’s a full-body experience, my TV persona,” she says. “I was doing a lecture last week, and I don’t know why I did it, but I was explaining how I do my presentations to clients [for her interior design business Habitus], that I’m quite physical, act out spaces, and I pretended to be a Barcelona chair.” She sticks out her legs and sits up straight and does her Barcelona chair impression.
I’m sold, and it doesn’t do any harm that she is sitting on the real thing as an aide memoire. But can she do an impression of a bath like the claw foot one she and Banjo are seen climbing into this season? “That was funny,” she says. “We got a bit out of control, because Banjo said Danny could shave our backs and we fell apart and I had to go and re-do my makeup.
We have such a laugh.” Not that things aren’t taken seriously by the judges, and Campbell-Jones can switch from fun to fastidious faster than you can say teak mid-century sideboard with Bang & Olufsen turntable [which sits along one wall]. “It’s really intense making SHOTY, long days and we try to do everything on the first or second take, so you end up a crumpled heap at the end of the day - a happy crumpled heap.
” Speaking of waving her hands about, what are her tattoos, the first of which she acquired at the age of 42? Now in her mid-fifties, she has quite a gallery. What do they signify? “The first was a swallow and now I have one on each hand. Swallows mate for life and return to the same spot every year to raise their family, so they’re about resilience and loyalty and safety.
Sailors believe that the swallow will make sure they get home no matter how many storms they face. That’s why the swallow has become a motif in my brand and in my collaboration with Ocean Plastic Pots. It’s a symbol of return and hope.
“Another tattoo is for my mum, and others I just say to Steven [Wrigley of Irezumi Tattoo Studio] ‘I want a tiger’. My little niece and my nephews always want to be eaten by the tiger, and I’ve got a dazzle ship, Mount Fuji, and that one’s a Sailor Jerry design. The geisha can dance if I do that,” she says and wiggles the muscles in her arm.
Appropriate, as Campbell-Jones says she has some of her best ideas while dancing. Setting up her own ‘micro’ brand in 2023 to run alongside her interior design business was a big decision for Campbell-Jones. “It’s been a real learning curve, but fun and interesting.
I’ve tried to get everything sustainable, made in Scotland, and am collaborating with people that know what they’re doing like Ally at Ocean Plastic Pots and Yvonne and Marion at No Rules Wallpaper. I’ve never designed a textile before or something using an injection moulding process, so I’ve been enjoying learning about other areas of design. All of the objects are for use in the home.
” As Campbell-Jones describes her design process, it emerges that she has a sixth sense in the form of synesthesia - a neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sense triggers an involuntary experience in another, so she will see colours associated with letters or numbers. “It’s a kind of feeling and really hard to describe. I worked out (while dancing) that I wanted to name the designs after shipping forecast areas and in my head Malin has to have green in it.
It was the same with the fragrances, what does Malin smell like? Seaweed.” “There’s my cat, Ivie!,” she says, distracted as her Siamese cross makes a grand entrance and eyes the photographer with cool, blue eyes. “She loves a photoshoot.
But likes to be photographed on her own,” says her owner. Sure enough Ivie poses on a variety of designer chairs before settling down among the bright cushions, confident she’s part of what makes this house a home. “Home is an evolution, it should evolve as you do and I’m now a single, middle-aged cat lady,” laughs Campbell-Jones.
“When I first moved in I was a married mother of a brand new baby and there’s been an awful lot of different versions of me and the home has changed according to that. Now I very much just jolly well please myself!” Open about her own past struggles with anxiety and depression, Campbell-Jones is delighted to be working with SAMH [Scottish Action for Mental Health], along with designer Finni Porter Chambers, in designing ‘The Nook’ for its Glasgow HQ, first of a network of walk-in mental health support hubs across the country. Opening later this year, Hubs in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Inverclyde and Lanarkshire will follow.
“After I wrote an article about my mental health someone sent me a DM thanking me for being open and said he was going through a really tough time and watches an episode of SHOTY every night. I’m pleased about that,” she says. It’s true there’s something reassuring about watching SHOTY of an evening.
“There’s no jeopardy,” she says. “And so much joy in the homes. And as the seasons have gone on there is a greater embracing of colour.
One particular set of pink and red bedlinen I nearly stole would match in here,” she says, looking around. How about advice for those who don’t have any money or a joiner partner like the lucky woman from Stockbridge in one of this season’s shows? What can we do to improve our homes? “Paint is your friend, because you can transform a space by changing the colour. And re-arrange stuff you’ve got.
Move furniture in a room, or from room to room, for a different vibe. And move pictures around or schmooshe them all together to create a big gallery wall. “I like putting an old painting next to a contemporary one.
These paintings, I’ve noticed similarities in the composition even though that is a photograph taken in Berlin, that’s a Patrick Caulfield, that’s by a GSA graduate...
and all of that happens unconsciously. “The best thing about going to art school, whatever you study, is you learn how to be a bit fearless about trying something and making a mistake. You can apply that to whatever you do in your life.
We’re getting quite deep aren’t we?” she laughs. Well I could ask about her colourful socks? Where does she get them? “These are from Palava, a sustainable British fashion brand. Some home owners prefer us not to wear shoes and I like to make sure that I have nice socks just in case.
” Does she co-ordinate her look with the other presenters? “I’ve given up trying to co-ordinate with Banjo. I ask him what colour he’s wearing for the next episode and he comes down to breakfast wearing something completely different!” If she had to choose one thing in her home that was the most precious, what would it be? “My Staffordshire cat because that was my mum’s. When my dad died she downsized and was frighteningly ruthless but took that with her.
She died suddenly and I never got to ask what was it about Maud - which I call her. And that’s Malcolm,” she says, pointing at a wally dug gazing off to the right. “I got him because Maud was lonely - she would have been one of a pair and I wanted a wally dug to go with her so when we had time off filming we’d go into charity shops, and eventually I found him in Shetland.
” For Campbell-Jones, home is a state of mind as much as a physical place, an evolution, but love is the key that unlocks it all. What in her home says love to her? “Everything I suppose..
. That coffee table was from my dad’s office, the trunk was my grandpa’s, my other grandpa’s cigarette boxes, they’re all just links to family and the story that every home tells. It’s filled with memories; of the kids running around, Frank and Stan on trikes haring up and down the hall like maniacs, playing football, me shouting ‘mind the pictures!’.
..” Now a household name, Campbell-Jones is approached by people who enjoy the show, so does she get bothered with interior dilemmas? “I don’t consider people coming and having a chat as being bothered, I absolutely see it as a privilege.
If people want to talk to me I think that’s great.” Ok, so what if they ask her questions like ‘should I let my teenager paint their bedroom black?’ “I always say ‘yes, it’s only paint!’ Have fun with it!” Scotland’s Home of the Year, series seven starts on Monday 21 April, 2025, 6.25pm on BBC One Scotland and Scotland HD and Wed 23 April, at 7.
30pm BBC Scotland. WATCH THE TRAILER HERE For more information about SAMH and The Nook, visit www.samh.
org.uk/about-us/the-nook.
