Johnny Ball: ‘We saved £700 by burying asbestos under the patio'

Telegraph

10-05-2025

Johnny Ball, 86, is a TV personality and former comedian. Once a host of Play School, he wrote and presented 20 TV series in the 1980s – such as Think of a Number and Johnny Ball Reveals All – to inspire confidence in maths, science and technology.
He has also written and produced corporate videos and five educational stage musicals and is a published author, with books including Mathmagicians and Wonders Beyond Numbers.
Today, Ball gives talks for educational and business conferences, maths and science training, schools, and does promotional work and commercials. He lives in a village in Buckinghamshire with his wife, Dianne.
What attracted you to your home?
When we bought our 1927 house for £50,000 in 1978 – the neighbours sniggered because it was a wreck. To the north of us, you're in fields almost immediately. I'm on an A-road, but in the office, I can't hear a sound when there's traffic.
We had three young children when we moved in, and it's always worked as our family home. It's five to six bedrooms because the master bedroom is big enough for two rooms. The garden was overgrown, but you could see it had been cared for.
I'm a happy man with a saw or screwdriver in my hand. Everywhere I look, I can say ' built that' or 'I designed it, put it in and fitted it'. I fitted the kitchen myself apart from the worktops, and the cupboards and shelves in my office.
What does 'home' mean to you?
I think our home is the location. We love the area, the neighbours. I go to pubs regularly, and have two pints with friends. And Di and I have pubs we go to. We walk the dog every day, plus we've got supermarkets not far away.
We're in the Chiltern Hundreds and have a running club – JAWS: Joggers and Wife Swappers…no, hang on, Joggers and Wheelers Society. They do cycling and walking trips. We also have breakfast every Sunday in a member's house, and once a year we're host to 30 to 40 people.
Di and I may be rattling around in a house that's too big, but we love it.
What's your biggest home improvement?
The big extension I designed. We did two extensions – one for the kitchen and one where we extended the bedroom to give us more room. The lounge is huge as well.
It was a single-fronted gabled house like Monopoly board houses when I bought it.
Do you have a favourite room?
My office. I'm in it every day – windows, my drum kit, settee and window seat. At the end of my big desk is a hexagonal spur for meetings.
I've got shelves for memorabilia and maths, history and humour books and 18 cupboards full of scripts I wrote, corporate videos I did and things I promoted like toys, geometry and chemistry kits.
The structure in your living room stands out, can you talk me through it?
It is a sculpture that one of my sons made at Saint Martin's for a fine art degree task to design something from nature that is usable.
It represents a Venus fly trap and you can sit in it.
How does your home compare to your childhood home?
I was born in Bristol where life was idyllic. We lived in a small brick terraced house at the end of a row of four. But the house was in an awful state, with broken-down cars outside.
One useful thing our back garden had was raspberry plants. During the war, you couldn't get fruit, so in the raspberry season, it was a luxury for me to come home and have a bowl full of raspberries with milk and sugar.
My parents came from Lancashire and moved back to Bolton when I was 11, in 1949, and bought a shop that had been closed for years because it didn't work. They didn't see that the catchment area meant few customers passing the shop, so it failed.
Suddenly, from being idyllically happy and passing my 11-plus in Bolton, in the next few years, we were very poor.
How many properties have you lived in?
Nine – all houses except for two flats I had in Blackpool. But I've only owned two, one in Heston, west of London – a three-storey town house with integral garage – and this one. It was near the BBC, as was this house.
I moved here when the BBC was at Wood Lane, 20 minutes away. It was an ideal position. I was still doing the clubs occasionally and was on the M40 going north, in Birmingham in just over an hour.
Do you garden?
We have the luxury of having gardeners who come in once a week. They do all the heavy stuff, the lawn and feeding it and keeping it spick and span. But we do the rest.
When I did the extension for my office, a rockery was where that room is now. So I drew a sketch of it, placed all the rockery stones to one side, built the extension and replanted the rockery.
We've got a cracking garden centre near to us and we pick plants together. I've got a beautiful yellow thing and lovely red stuff – don't know what they are, but it's all gorgeous.
What are the best and worst things about your garden?
No worst thing, except it can flood by the bottom gate – but only for a day if it's a deluge, when the drains back up. Best, it's a garden that looks after itself – a lot of hedges and shrubbery rather than flower beds.
Where would you live if you had to move?
We don't want to move and have never desired a property in the sun. Because Di does most of our cooking at home, when we go away on holiday, we go to hotels rather than apartments, so she can do nothing but be waited on.
Has any design feature of your home presented a problem?
When I changed the garage, it had a low-pitched roof made of corrugated asbestos. When I had to take it down, I rang the council. They told me to take it down and they'd pick it up – but they'd charge me £700.
When I asked why, they told me 'because it's dangerous'. 'But you just told me to take it down', I replied. And they recommended I 'sprinkle it with water and wear a mask'. I said, 'So if it's not a problem, why are you charging £700?'.
In the end, we got the asbestos down and buried it under the patio. It saved £700.
Has your home presented unwanted surprises?
When we built the kitchen extension, on the other side of the breakfast bar, I built a five-inch-platform so you could sit there on normal chairs, not stools – which I hate.
However, if the people on the outside wanted to leave, the platform ended 1m from the wall. So when you wanted to go to the loo, you had to put your hand up and ask because if you just put your chair back, the back legs could go off the platform.
One lady fell with me and another fella both grabbing her, and we all fell in slow motion.
And Paul McCartney's business manager, Steve Shrimpton, who lived locally, once went off the back and hit his head on the wall just above the skirting board.
I'm thinking, 'I'm not insured for Paul McCartney's business manager to beat his brains out on my wall'. He was Australian and got up saying, 'Geez John, I've crooked your chair!'.