“Every time I’m driving to a shoot, I talk to him. Have a little chat,” says Brendan Courtney. “People think I’m crazy. I say to him, ‘make sure I’m doing this right, give me a sign!’”
Given the late Hugh Wallace’s innate mischievousness, it’s not hard, somehow, to imagine the architect finding a way to “drop something from the ceiling” to let his friend know he’s completing the final episodes of The Great House Revival to Wallace’s satisfaction.
Wallace, a true national treasure, was in the middle of shooting season six of the show when he died unexpectedly on December 1 last year.
The Friday before, Courtney, Wallace, and Wallace’s husband Martin Corbett had enjoyed the evening out together and, as Courtney drove home that night, he recalls telling himself: “I need to spend more time with Hugh and Martin. I really love them. They’re just great people.”
But there was to be no more time. The following Monday, as a stand-in host on Oliver Callan’s show, Courtney would share the news of Wallace’s death on air, pay heartfelt tribute to his friend, then facilitate others in doing so.
The 18-minute segment was a masterclass in professionalism under difficult circumstances, and Courtney’s authenticity and warmth shone through the broadcast.
Like Wallace, Courtney is a people person, a talented TV presenter, and hugely passionate about design.
Hugh’s main job was a designer who became a TV presenter, and I’m a TV presenter and became a designer. We had different angles on things, and we would discuss at length things we liked, things we didn’t like.
One thing Courtney likes — no, loves — is interiors. To date, he’s done three home renovations (his late dad, Frank, was a builder, so revamping is in the blood), the most recent being his house in Wicklow, which he’d just moved into when a car crashed into it.
“There was the acknowledgement that it’s bricks and mortar and everybody’s OK,” he says now. “But it was tough to move back out. I had just moved in. It was a very unsure time.”
It was a stroke of luck that he had a builder already booked to do an extension to the back. “He said: ‘Look, just move out and we’ll just do the whole lot.’”
Another bit of luck was having somewhere to move into. He’d bought his city centre penthouse apartment from Nama after the crash for €235,000.
“Nama nearly blocked the sale,” he recalls.
“I had to get really aggressive with the banks and bought it in the end.”
He loved his years living there, but had decided it was time to move on. He was about to sell and relocate full-time to Wicklow when the accident happened.
When we speak, the painters are in the Wicklow house, so he’s hoping to move back imminently. He’s beyond excited about the house, and the new extension.
“It’s really lovely,” Courtney says. “I’ve done a good job, I have to say. I designed it myself. I loved it. Home and interiors and renovations are absolutely where my heart and head is.”
He worked with an architect on the original renovations but, for this iteration, it’s all him. The confidence to have taken it on comes, he says, “from my design background”, pointing out that “design is a language”, and clearly it is one he speaks fluently.
Furniture collab
He’s just done a garden furniture collaboration with EZ Living Interiors, and is bursting with enthusiasm for it.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” he tells me, and he’s not wrong. The “blossoms in Japan” were his inspiration for the “completely sustainable” range of garden furniture, which is crafted from acacia wood. It’s incredibly versatile in that it is designed to work as well indoors as it does outdoors. The beautiful wipe-clean, waterproof cushions are “Nancy-friendly” — a reference to his beloved Jack Russell-pug-chihuahua Nancy Drew — “and they’re really comfortable”.
The collection has turned out “even nicer than I anticipated,” he says, adding that “to complement it, EZ Living Interiors let me curate my own interior accessories of cushions and glassware bits [from their range]”.
Courtney’s enthusiasm for the project is wholly genuine, and that authentic ebullience is something he’s carried with him from day one, when he burst onto Irish TV screens in 1999 as the host of Wanderlust — an ahead-of-its-time hybrid of online dating (via chatrooms) and travel. The format was Courtney’s idea, and he went on to sell it to 19 countries.
“One of the words I would use about myself, looking back on my career, is fearless because my parents were fearless,” he says, explaining that by fearless, he means he wasn’t afraid of a “week or two” of unemployment, and had faith that “something would come up”.
His approach was to “give things a go and have the confidence to say ‘it’ll work out’. And it did”.
Many would certainly have considered it fearless, or perhaps foolhardy, to quit a salaried job back in 1996, but that’s what Courtney did when he left his production assistant post on Riverdance .
“I wasn’t in the area I wanted to be in. I wanted to work in television. And so I did.”
Following his heart to do “more creative work” and being fearless, has paid off.
Wanderlust (which he gutsily pitched to RTÉ as a non-negotiable package with himself as host) saw him dubbed “RTÉ’s new Cilla” but, with no shade to the late Liverpudlian icon, he’s proven himself to be much more than that.
Housing and healthcare
He has tackled the big topics of our time — housing and healthcare — with the latter resulting in work that he is most proud of, his 2017 documentary We Need To Talk About Dad . He’s “still surprised” his dad Frank — “a very private man” — agreed to take part, but he did, and did so “wholeheartedly”, Courtney says, and they “had a ball making it within a very dark time”.
Frank had suffered a second stroke; the documentary followed the family as they navigated accessing options for his full-time care.
“The last year of his life, because of the documentary, made us really close.
“We got to really get to know each other and it was a real gift of a thing to be able to do,” Courtney says now.
(He has continued to advocate for the Government to better support families who want to care for older loved ones at home. Currently, the fair deal scheme is designed to support nursing home care only.)
One evening, while filming We Need to Talk About Dad , Courtney remembers going home to his city centre apartment and having the realisation that he needed to plan for the future and move.
“Five floors up. In the middle of the city centre. It’s not a place to grow old,” he says of his fabulous penthouse, from the balcony of which he can see across to the Phoenix Park’s Wellington Monument.
Moving on
It takes maturity to realise it is time to move on, and that current circumstances aren’t serving you, but Courtney has always been an evolved creature.
He’s been single — “I’m absolutely not looking” — since September 2024, when he and Adam Maryniak ended their decade-long relationship.
“It was actually Adam who called it,” says Courtney.
“We both knew it but, at the end of the day, it was him who sat down and said: ‘Look, let’s talk.’
“Before he even said a word, I said: ‘I agree.’ We were both immediately on the same page.”
Newly single Courtney decided he wanted “a year of just … clarity. And a year of just, keeping things simple, see what happens. No pressure, learning to love myself, keeping things simple. So I’m not even dating at the moment.”
The break-up was, he says, “very mature. It was really full of love”. The two have remained best friends, holidayed together last year, and “Adam comes over nearly every other day to mind the dog”.
Maryniak is “dating somebody at the moment and I’m really happy for him,” Courtney says.
Planning for the future
That clear-eyed approach extends to planning for his old age. His parents were of a generation that didn’t plan for the possibility they might, in their elder years, need full-time care, and all the implications that come with that.
“I forgive them, but it was very difficult at the time because they weren’t prepared, they weren’t making decisions. I’d kind of like to think I’ve learned a little bit from that, and I’ll try and prepare. I’m quite comfortable with the thought that I might have to go into a nursing home, and I’ll try and be involved in the selection of that. I’ve asked one of my nephews to be my enduring power of attorney. Not planning actually becomes a real hardship for your family and children to manage.”
Part of that planning has been the move to Wicklow and the renovation of the house, which is now fully future-proofed. It’s all on one level, his bedroom has double doors, “all the showers are walk-in showers now. And it’s fully wheelchair accessible”, he says, adding: “It wasn’t a driving force, but it was consideration when I was designing it: ‘Is this a house that you can grow old in?’ It actually really is.”
My First Home
Another home-related venture he has on the go is property podcast My First Home and, like all things Courtney, it has its finger firmly on the pulse of what’s current.
“I do these first-time buyers events all the time,” he says, “where people come and we have a panel, an estate agent, a lawyer, someone from a mortgage adviser, and we talk about how you get onto the ladder. To spice things up at the end, I’d say to the panel: ‘And what was your first time?’
“Every time, the crowd would just sit up and engage really intensely, because people were looking for stories of hope, stories of people who’ve done it.”
The podcast, which has first-hand stories of people who’ve saved that deposit, got that mortgage, and bought their first home, along with expert tips, is flying it — “It’s No 1 on the leisure [charts]”.
When asked what his ambitions are for the future, his answer is unexpected. “I have lots of ambitions, big ambitions, but my main ambition is to try and learn and maintain inner peace and happiness. All of the external things and all of the external achievements in my life that I thought would make me happy didn’t. What actually makes me happy is kindness, love, honesty, and openness.
“As I’m moving into my 50s, I look around and I really think about what makes me happy, and what makes me happy is really simple things. Walking my dog. Swimming in the sea. Being kind. I suppose my ambitions, as the world is really dark, is just to try and everyday share kindness in some way.
“I think that’s it really, the biggest thing, and if the work that I get to do, and then make a living doing, can in some way showcase or inspire some sort of kindness, that’s really my ambition.”
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