“My Window Fondling Hell” – Dermot Bannon

RETURNING with another series, WWN catches up with presenter Dermot Bannon on his secret addiction to fondling large panes of glass and how he deals with his urges in the new series of Room to Improve.

It got to the stage where I was caressing four, five windows a day. Past clients would come home to find me softly touching their bay window. You see, I’d always make a spare key and I guess in hindsight this was very wrong of me and highly illegal. I would always excuse my presence by saying I was doing a revisit episode, but there never was a revisit episode – it was just me rubbing my freshly shaven face across the ridiculously priced window I made them buy for my own pleasure. Trespassing, they called it. To me, it was more like Caress-passing.

When I look back at all the unnecessarily humongous glass windows I made clients buy, I feel ashamed. They didn’t ask for this – it was all for me and my propensity for triple glazing. I told them it was for the view, but if I’m honest, I never looked past the pane. It was all about the cold, smooth feeling of expensive liquid sand against my goose-bumped flesh and that flatulence sound my fingers made when I pushed them against the glass; fuuurp… fuuurp… fuuuuurp. I could furp for days.

I suppose it all came to a head when I woke up a pair of former clients one morning, furping. And despite their sheer terror when they entered their sitting room at 4am, I could do nothing else but laugh manically. I knew the game was up, so I guess laughing like that was a defining moment for me, and the latter charge of breaking and entering, which they kindly dropped to an offer of free extension plans – no large windows this time, understandably.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think about large windows every day, but I don’t crave them anymore. If you offered me to fondle your window right now, I’d happily decline. That’s just not me anymore. That Dermot Bannon is dead. The new DB is focused on clients who want a practical home that centres around warmth and happiness, not some sexy, statement piece viewing pod glistening with an arousing blue hue.

I guess we all have room to improve.