What do you think about the planning laws? Flawed but necessary? Sensible or restrictive? Probably, like me, they’re good for others and slightly annoying when applied to your own grand building plan. The recent example of a pub, demolished by developers the day before a listing was brought into force, is a case of everyone cheering when the planning law was enforced – they have been told to rebuild it brick by brick. Personally I have a total fear – and one I’m not alone with I’m sure – of something awful being built in my eyeline. When a near neighbour built a hideous tiered garden behind the house I was seething for months. He applied for planning permission retrospectively, after building the monstrosity, and got it. The people featured in Channel 4’s Damed Designs last night were less lucky.

Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The programme followed four people who had built their dream homes without proper permission, and who had become locked in long legal battles to try to prevent orders for demolition as a result. I’d read about some of these cases already, in the ever-on-it Daily Mail. Thing is, where I read about these people going ahead regardless, not giving a damn for the rules on green belt or whatever, I was all for them being torn down. Surely it’s preferable to planning chaos and people building whatever they like, wherever they want. But as the programme followed the stories of these four, I found myself cheering for them. Even with the ugliest of homes, once finished, it seemed like outrageous vandalism to have them torn down.

Image: The Daily Mail

Take for example the farmer who built his dream castle underneath a hay stack. Yep. I had read about this in the Mail, and it’s a corker. The farmer had been denied permission to build on his green belt farm land. However he discovered a loophole in planning law – that even a house that was ‘illegal’ could be permitted to stay if no one had complained for four years after completion. Finding no rules against hiding a house during this time, he set about constructing a house hidden behind a huge pile of hay bales. My initial verdict was that the castle was vulgar and the sneak should have it demolished. However last night’s show was a revelation. Unable to involve builders – for obvious reasons – Robert planned and built the whole castle himself. The workmanship of this self-taught builder was exquisite, and the fact that it was hand-built in a hay-cave only adds to the achievement. Even more crazily, he and his family lived in the home for four years, sneaking in and out via a false-door in the hay. It was hard not to feel that he deserved to keep his home after all that.

Another interesting case was that of the Headington Shark. I’ve heard about this when I was a kid, but I didn’t know much about the homeowner before. Bill Heine turned out to be a rather dapper bohemian with a 70s ‘tach, who conceived of the shark as a way to “express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation… It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki.” Right on! To my mind the shark detracted not at all from the ordinary Oxford street it landed in. It was built in 1986, and the interview with a local planner shows that some people are still seething about it to this day. So why wasn’t it demolished? According to the programme the appeals went right to the Secretary of State for the Environment – one Michael Heseltine. His verdict? “Any system of control must make some small place for the dynamic, the unexpected, the downright quirky. I therefore recommend that the Headington shark be allowed to remain.” Go Hezzer – who’da thunk?

Catch up with the first episode here – I’d love to hear your thoughts – and check out next week’s too – looks like a showdown between and eco hippie and the council over a little hobbit house is going to pull at the heart-strings too.