Nick Knowles has released an album, and it has nothing to do with DIY
After several years of mystifying absence from the charts, one recording artist has released a much-anticipated album today. No, no, not Taylor Swift, but Nick Knowles, the chirpy-yet-earnest presenter of longstanding BBC renovation show DIY SOS, otherwise known as The One That Outlived Changing Rooms.
At 55, Knowles has embarked upon the kind of rampant career swerve that few could even dream of, and released an album stuffed with covers of songs that he has "really fallen in love with over the years". When he released a first listen, in the form of a sincere version of Make You Feel My Love, it conjured comparisons to David Brent, the office manager-turned-troubadour created by Ricky Gervais. Now the album's been delivered, there's even more Brent to go around.
This comes mere months after the release of Knowles's vegan and vegetarian cookbook, Proper Vegan Food, the cover of which claims it is "for meat lovers". He has, indeed, been a busy man.
So what of this album? It's called Every Kind of People, after the Robert Palmer song that Knowles has covered and claims "represents my ethos in life". Going on the multimedia accoutrements supporting the record on Knowles's website, much of the record was recorded in an artfully distressed attic with the accompaniment of an all-female string quartet and a backing band.
Knowles has been playing music since his teens, when he formed a band called Pygmy Ricochet while still at school. He never thought about making music a profession, but would continue to play at home, mostly while watching the television – a habit, he says, "which drives anyone else in the house mad".
When not playing guitar during scheduled programming (Knowles did not clarify if he watched DIY SOS or not), Knowles would also perform at family functions, such as his Auntie Sheila's 80th birthday, which he celebrated with a rendition of Nat King Cole's Smile – a track also on the album. Knowles's elder brother John is also a musician, and the pair continue to play together.
Some of these Knowles family shindigs were witnessed by a friend who happened to be an A&R man. But it was only when this music industry pal witnessed Knowles "on a rooftop singing and playing a session with Biffy Clyro one night until the early hours of the morning" that the notion of an album was mooted. Knowles, a humble man, divulges little detail about this rock'n'roll-sounding session with the Brit Award-nominated rockers from East Ayrshire, but The Telegraph has contacted their representatives for more information.
From there, Knowles rifled through the songs that he loved the most – including John Mayer's Body is a Wonderland, which Knowles admits he "learned to play it to someone I love" and believes "the second verse is one of the sexiest I've ever heard" – and put on a showcase for Universal to convince them the world needed to hear his gravelly tones. It was Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love, a 1997 album track that was given a bigger platform by Adele when she included it on her debut album, that sealed the deal.
The record has only been out for a matter of hours, but Knowles's fans are already very excited and struggling to choose between their favourite tracks.
Not everyone, however, wishes DIY's friendliest broadcaster the best. Former EastEnders star Shane Ritchie, who has been nurturing a Cockney take on Irish country music for more than 20 years, was dismissive of Knowles's entry into the industry. "I don’t know Nick very well, but he’s a chippie who sings. I do this to make a living," he told The Guardian in October, adding that it was "horrible being tied in with Nick Knowles," despite nobody actually making an association between the two.
Knowles's chart success is yet to be seen. But there are good precedents for it: soap star Bradley Walsh had the biggest-selling album of the year in 2016, which has spurred him on to release another, When You're Smiling, today. Now there's a chart battle nobody saw coming.