The presenter, actor and writer has been living in his childhood home for nearly a year now while he carries out a renovation on his family home – and jokes that he is ‘traumatised’
Baz Ashmawy
Baz Ashmawy has described his fabulous mother Nancy as his “lucky charm” – but the 51-year-old is still desperate to get out from under her hair, having lived back in his childhood home for nearly a year now.
When Chic chats to Baz, he’s eight months into a home renovation and he and his family are living with his 83-year-old mum in South Dublin while works are completed.
“I’m quite traumatised,” Baz laughs. “I’ve been living out of my home since last August so I’m going a bit doolally at the moment, doing house renovations.
“I’ve been living up in my mum’s for the last year nearly. I’m sharing a room with a 13-year-old so I’m ready to hit the roof at this point.
“And last night mum was in the bed opposite me because the 13-year-old moved rooms!”
Baz worked closely with his mum on their BAFTA-winning show 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy which saw Nancy skydive, befriend crocodiles, fly warplanes and rip down zip lines, among other thrills.
But nowadays, Nancy is enjoying a slower pace of life – with no plans to collaborate with her son on another project.
“She’s just so good at the moment, she’s having such a nice time, she’s a real social butterfly,” Baz tells Chic.
“She’s constantly travelling and she’s so happy so I think she’s probably earned the right to do what she wants without me.
“But I love working with her, I’d work with her forever but I think she’s just at a stage where she’s enjoying her mates and her family, and hanging out.
“So we’ve no projects on the horizon but whatever I do, even with Faithless, I’d always try and squeeze her in somewhere because I’m just her biggest fan and she’s my lucky charm as well.”
Life is very different for Baz, who is juggling his home renovations with raising his family and working on plenty of ideas for new television projects.
But he wouldn’t change a thing as he says he is “lucky” to do things he loves.
“There are lots of things I want to do,” he says.
“Whether they happen or not, I don’t know because sometimes my work/life balance can get out of sync so I’m trying to be more economic with the work I do.
“I’d love to write a play. I do love radio, I always was thinking I’d go back to radio at some stage because I do love it as a medium.
“There’s loads of documentary ideas that I’m banging around in my head too, and I wanna write a feature.
“So there’s loads of things – and I think there always should be, whether it’s in your professional life or in your home life, you should just be trying to do new things all the time. And I’m very lucky that I work in a medium that I can move in and out of different genre of things.
“And I’m lucky that I don’t do things that I don’t want to do because once you start doing things just for money or whatever then all of a sudden you can start to fall out of love with what you do.”
Baz is no stranger to working with his family, with his daughter Amelia, who is an actress, having a part in Faithless – which follows three Dublin sisters and their Irish/Egyptian dad who, after a tragic incident, has to raise his three daughters alone.
And while he hopes there will be another season of Faithless, which he created, wrote and starred in, Baz also has another idea on the go as we speak.
“It’s funny the way the industry works and I’m very bad at sitting around waiting so when we were still filming Faithless, I had an idea for something else so I’ve been chipping away at that and over the summer I’ll really be getting my teeth into that,” he says.
“I love the writing, I really enjoy that process. It’s a strange thing to be in your sitting room, alone, and writing away and then walk onto a set one day and it all comes to life, it’s a real kick.
“I really enjoy that so I’m definitely hoping to make something else but I also hope that Faithless comes back. I loved it but you just never know with these things because there’s just so many shows out there.
“And sometimes every now and then I just like to do something new and different.
“I haven’t made a documentary in a while so there’s been a documentary in the back of my mind for a while now, to do something meaty.
“But the writing, in particular, is something I just really, really enjoy so I definitely think I’ll keep writing.”
Baz finds inspiration for his writing from personal experiences, “those little moments of life” that plant a seed.
“I think you take a little bit of your own life and you change it into a story,” he says.
“You know that expression, ‘You couldn’t write it’ – sometimes people go through things and they just seem unbelievable and you live through experiences and sometimes those little seeds and those really dark times – sometimes out of that, those little moments of life, you take those and you go, that’s interesting.
“Then you start writing and it always ends up as something quite different but it started with that seed.
“So my writing is usually based out of real life or something that I’ve experienced and then it fabricates into a story.”
As for working with his children – Baz and his long-term partner Tanja share six kids – again in the future, Baz adds, “I would work with any of my kids.
“Amelia is a great actress, she’s over in the UK doing her own thing – she has her one-woman show – so she’s got her own vibe but if I had any excuse to work with any of my kids or if there was something they wanted to do – especially as they’re growing into young adults – 100 per cent I’d work with my kids.
“I’m a big fan of Amelia, she’s great.
“The kids are all really different. One of the boys, he works in sound, he’s over in the UK too, he was doing sound on Wicked so he fell into that side of the industry. Charlotte is an artist.
“They all do quite different things but they’re all quite creative in their own ways but I don’t think, bar Amelia, they want to be front of camera.
“But I always tell the kids, once you’re doing something you love 50 per cent of the time, you’re winning – there’s no perfect job so if half the time you love it, you’re doing great so I just want them to be happy in what they’re doing.
“You should pursue what you want to do, especially when you’re young.”
Baz, who also hosts DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland, which sets out to renovate the homes of deserving families, recently teamed up with The Panelling Centre on his new kitchen – but he admits he is useless around the house!
“I’m not at all one of these people who fixes stuff around the house – I’m useless,” he told us.
“Tanja is brilliant. Me, I’ll write you a sonnet but I’m useless at all that. Tanja is quite useful, quite practical, and the boys are quite handy like that but I’ve never been handy at all.
“It’s never been an interest of mine. It’s like cars, I like cars but open up a bonnet and I’m useless. It doesn’t work at all.”
A new study from The Panelling Centre, carried out among 750 homeowners and 100 tradespeople, has highlighted how kitchen priorities shift across generations, from Generation Z homeowners (18-29-year-olds) to Boomers (62-80-year-olds), with older homeowners focusing on longevity and usability, while younger groups are more influenced by trends, social media, and the pressure to create host-worthy spaces.
For Baz, making the kitchen “more liveable” was the aim.
“We’re making the house a bit more liveable at the moment because our kids are bigger now so we need it to work better for us as a family,” he says.
“We spend a lot of time in our kitchen – it’s quite a big room in our house – and the guys at The Panelling Centre were brilliant, they took away a lot of the pain and we got the kitchen we wanted. It’s nice, durable material but it still looks nice and it works.”
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