Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
Llewelyn-Bowen engraving names into his latest collection of designer glassware (2007)
Born	Laurence Roderwick Bowen[1] (1965-03-11) 11 March 1965 (age 48) Kensington, London, England
Nationality	British
Education	Fine Art degree
Alma mater	Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts
Occupation	Interior designer, television personality
Years active	1996–present
Known for	Changing Rooms and other television work
Spouse(s)	Jackie
Parents	Trefor Llewelyn-Bowen & Patricia Wilks[2]
Website
http://www.llb.co.uk

Laurence Roderick Llewelyn-Bowen^[3] (born 11 March 1965) is a successful English homestyle consultant best known for his appearances on the BBC television programme Changing Rooms.^[4] He is noted for his flamboyant personality and dandyish appearance.

Name [edit]

He is sometimes credited as "Laurence Llewelyn Bowen",^[5] and the components of his name are frequently misspelled "Llewellyn"^[6] and/or "Lawrence".^[7] On Changing Rooms, he is occasionally jocularly styled "Lord Laurence", a play on Laurence Olivier and Llewelyn-Bowen's flamboyance.

Early life and education [edit]

Laurence R. Bowen was born in 1965 in Kensington, London, to parents Trefor and Patricia Bowen (née Wilks). His father, a Harley Street orthopaedic surgeon, died of leukaemia in 1974, aged 42, when Laurence was just nine years of age.^[2] His mother, a teacher, died in 2002.^[8] He has a brother called Edward and a sister called Frances. He is of Welsh descent.^[4]

Llewelyn-Bowen was educated at Alleyn's School in Dulwich before graduating from the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (now a constituent college of the University of the Arts London) in 1986 with a Fine Art degree.^[8]

Early career [edit]

After graduating, Llewelyn-Bowen worked for the Harefield Group of Companies and the interior design firm Peter Leonard Associates. In 1989 he started his own design consultancy.

Television [edit]

His wife Jackie (born in 1964), 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.

Early 2000s [edit]

In 2002 Llewelyn-Bowen made a cameo appearance in the comedy series The League of Gentlemen, in which he comes to decorate the garden of one of the characters. He acts as a depressed, smoking, and comically bald version of himself, and is killed by a collapsing wall.

In 2004 Llewelyn-Bowen designed the interior of the Inc Bar in Greenwich, England in a former 1830s music hall. The design features Larry's Bar, named after Llewelyn-Bowen and "the Divan", a dimly lit nook, a sort of make-out room.^[9]

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.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? controversy [edit]

In January 2006, Llewelyn-Bowen 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 it incorrectly and dropping down to £32,000 (a loss of £468,000). For the first time ever, Celador allowed Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife retry the show after the company claimed that the last question "didn't meet their standards".^{[citation needed]} 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 Children's Hospice, of which Llewelyn-Bowen 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, until 23 August 2009, no other contestant has answered the final question incorrectly in the United Kingdom version. 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 originally English and has in fact been the motto of the United States 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. E pluribus unum had been the de facto motto but was never legally declared as such.

Recent work [edit]

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen opening a charity shop in Stow-on-the-Wold in 2009

In 2007 he designed Decodance for Blackpool Illuminations, featuring six illuminated burlesque beauties.^[10][11]

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

In 2008 he began hosting a Sunday morning radio show The Sunday Spa on Classic FM.^[12]

Again in 2008, he returned to Blackpool Illuminations to design Venus Reborn, a theatric tableau featuring a 15 minute show of sound, light and water effects.^[13]

A study of Laurence's family tree featured in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? programme first aired on 29 September 2008. It showed that Llewelyn-Bowen's mother's family had a seafaring history.^[2]

On 13 April 2009 he presented a documentary on BBC One in the West region in which he went "In Search of England's Green & Pleasant Land".^[14] The programme explored the threats to the rural way of life from urban creep and the loss of local services.

In 2009, Laurence also released two ranges of papercrafting products in conjunction with Trimcraft, called Retro Rose and Venaissence.^[15]

Laurence appeared on the 2010 series of the ITV1 reality show 'Popstar to Operastar' as a critic along side Meat Loaf, and classically trained mentors Katherine Jenkins and Rolando Villazón.

For the 2010 Blackpool Illuminations Laurence became the Creative Director and has designed lots of new features trying to make the illuminations more modern, including dinosaurs, vampires and ghouls.^[16]

Since 2010, Laurence has presented the daytime ITV1 show Auction Party.

Personal life [edit]

Until 2004 Llewelyn-Bowen lived in Kidbrooke, South East London. With his wife Jackie and their two daughters, Cecile (born 1995) and Hermione (born 1998), he moved to a 17th century, grade-II listed manor house in Siddington, a small village in Cirencester, Gloucestershire in April 2007.^[4] He and his wife are ambassadors to the aid agency CARE International UK and in February 2008 visited the cyclone-hit areas of Bangladesh. They are also active patrons for children's cancer charity CLIC Sargent and Shooting Star Children's Hospice

Llewelyn-Bowen is also a patron of the children's charity MERU, co-founded by his father Trefor Llewelyn-Bowen with Bill Bond in 1970.

He has recently acquired a home in Port Isaac, Cornwall, which is well known as the filming location of the TV series Doc Martin.

He is related to Emanuel Bowen, map maker to King George II. ^[17]

Other appearances within pop-culture [edit]

Llewelyn-Bowen has a cameo appearance within the best-selling British alternative science fiction comedy novel Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin.^{[18][page needed]}

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC Biography bbc.co.uk
• Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen presents on Classic FM