How Clean Is Your House? (C4)

WE'VE had people on TV decorating homes and designing gardens. Others tell home-owners how to make their homes more attractive to buyers, while experts reveal how to de-clutter houses.

Now comes How Clean Is Your House? which goes back to basics by sending dream cleaners Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie to make filthy home-owners clean, scrub and sweep away the dirt and the grime.

They're a pair of rubber glove-wearing, dustpan and brush-wielding Mrs Mops who, in the words of the old commercial, beat as they as sweep as they clean. Those they were beating verbally as vigorously as they would a dusty carpet in the episode I saw were a father and son, Dave and Nick, from Jarrow.

The preview tape labelled this the first in the series, although C4 then decided to kick off with a different episode last night. But if you've seen one house cleaned, you've seen them all. I suspect the treatment handed out to Dave and Nick is pretty much the same as all their victims will suffer in coming weeks.

Dave and Nick's attitude to housework is simple - don't do it. They explain their lack of desire to clean the cooker on the following lines: "If you cook on it, you make a mess on it, so why worry cleaning it?". This reflects the national trend. On average, women spend four hours a week cleaning, while men devote only up to half as much time.

Kim and Aggie didn't like the sights and smells that greeted them on entering the five-room flat. "Oooh, the honk," they declared, turning up their noses in disgust. This had much to do with the two men's nicotine addiction. The cleaners found five ashtrays and 105 fag ends, evidence of a 40 a day habit. Walls had been stained brown and carpets, curtains and chairs reeked of smoke.

The bathroom proved surprisingly clean, apart from the pile of damp clothes festering with mould beneath the sink. The entire contents of the kitchen, however, were declared unfit for human consumption. They discovered dirty dishes, caked with decaying food, lining every surface. Only the dish rack was empty and that was swimming in slime. Finding the bread bin was being used as a tool box was the least of their worries.

Nick was ticked off for thinking the women's critical comments funny. He wasn't laughing when he and his father were given the really hideous tasks, such as scraping slime and grease from surfaces in the kitchen.

The fastidious women in white coats kept one job for themselves - the grease-encrusted chip pan that Dave stopped them throwing away. It took two hours of hard work, entailing 12 soap wire pads, scouring powder and plenty of elbow grease, to make it shine again.

Dave and Nick were impressed by their spick-and-span home at the end of two days of intensive cleaning by Kim, Aggie and their team. So much so that Dave was showing interest in the details of cleaning - should he spray cleaner on the duster and then wipe, or on to the surface and wipe that with a cloth? The next thing you know, he'll be giving up smoking.

Published: 22/05/2003