TV presenter and actor Stifyn Parri may have houses in London and Cardiff but he says his real home's a car. PENNY REEVES investigates.

"I don't live anywhere really," Stifyn sighed while we chatted in his Cardiff home-cum-office. "I spend my life on the M4 between working in London and working here.

"I bought this house with a friend 18 months ago. I needed somewhere to start my producing company and he was looking for somewhere too, so it made sense to buy one big place. I was tired of staying in hotels and friends' back rooms, I needed somewhere where I knew there were clean underpants.

"Cardiff was the obvious choice - it's on the way up. This house was near Cardiff Bay, close to the M4 and I could walk into town."

We were talking in his office, at the top of the house overlooking the Millennium Stadium. He apologised for the dust everywhere. The house looks like a builders' dump outside and inside's not vastly different, as Stifyn readily admits.

"This was six bedsits when we bought it, ten times worse than outside. We're still working on it. I created this office out of two smelly brown rooms. I buy a house and rip everybody else's touch out and put my own in. I'm the ideas person. I picture what I want but I'm not good at doing it so I surround myself with people who can."

Stifyn, co-presenter on HTV's makeover programme 'House to House', is perfectly placed to find people who 'can' but he did manage to build a wall between a sitting area and the kitchen himself. The whole area's painted purple.

"The vision I wanted was Cadbury's UFOs landing in my kitchen. It took three people and the man next door cooking me curries but I built that wall and got my vision. We're going to put big metal silver plates on the cupboards soon."

Stifyn loves cooking - and eating. "We have lots of parties. I don't follow recipes, I just chuck everything in the party pot."

He's also responsible for the unusual green guest-room cupboards. "I call them scratch cupboards - I'm going to patent the idea. They were vile so I just painted them, then used Brillo pads, forks, cheese grater, doily and candles and created this effect."

The phone hardly stops ringing. "I'm a real phonaholic," he laughed. "I can't live without music either - it's throughout the house and in the car."

The fact that he's a workaholic is also evident. During our chat he's also choosing music for the BAFTA Cymru awards ceremony which he's producing and co-presenting soon.

"I don't relax. I won't tidy up and clean the kitchen, for instance. I can watch TV but only for about half an hour."

He's lively, chatty - "I talk a hell of a lot" - and unconventional, and his homes have always been equally unconventional.

"I moved into the coalhouse at my parents' home when my hormones kicked in at 13. An elephant had slept there when the circus came to town. I always opt out of a house. My London house has an office built in the garden and I had to add an office to this house too."

Not many houses boast Roman pillars in the living areas and Roman heads on the office wall either.

"The pillars were in a nightclub skip. They looked like they should be used, not thrown away, so I rescued them. They help hide loads of rubbish. The Roman head came from a skip too."

The big - and I mean "big" - chair isn't your usual furniture either. "The day the Assembly opened, I thought I'd get my own Assembly seat. I saw this outside an antique shop in Canton. I'm having Welsh slate put on the seat so we can eat off it. There'll also be a huge cushion on top - it's fantastic to sit on, you feel like a child again." Despite the builders' mess, wood floors and lots of cream contribute to a minimalist feel.

"I love possessions. My house in London has loads, it's like an elephant stall. I'm trying to do the opposite here, 'less is more' kind of thing. The wooden floors are deliberate - we'll have them polished. I don't have pictures on the walls, no career everywhere. I can't think of anything worse. I hate plants too - they collect dust and die.

"Lighting's vital and I love the sort of white on the walls. It's called limewhite and looks fantastic with candlelight." It sounds glamorous, having two homes, but it's not. "You'll go to get something and it's always in the other house. "I'm very organised - I have to be - and I'd love pattern in my life, but would hate it if I actually had it - I get bored very easily."