PROPERTY company Abel Homes has recreated a teenage boy’s messy bedroom in its show home in an attempt to attract buyers’ attention.

Good idea. “We want to create a talking point and help people visualise it as a family home,” says director Maggie Abel.

But I have seen a picture of the room and it horrified me. The bed is unmade, there are a few crumpled Tshirts and a pair of trainers on the floor with some crisps trodden into the carpet. It was, in other words, pretty immaculate.

For a start, you could actually see the floor. If I can make out more than four square centimetres of carpet in one of my teenage boys’ rooms I consider it a particularly good day.

I suppose you could describe this showroom as a typical teenage boys’ bedroom – but only after Kim and Aggie have been in for a month with a team of cleaners, some industrial strength chemicals and heavy duty machinery and given it a thorough going over.

This is the sort of teenage room that I, and countless other parents, can only dream of. Abel Homes certainly has created a talking point.

We’re all talking about where we’re going wrong. And what on earth you have to do to get teenage boys to be so tidy.

If Mrs Abel really wants to create an authentic teenage boy’s room in her show home – and avoid getting into trouble with Trading Standards – let me offer some advice.

For a start, entry to the room should be difficult. Most teenage boys fiercely guard their privacy. This is when they start putting stickers on their doors saying Keep Out and No Entry. If possible, they lock the door.

If not, they wedge a chair under the handle in an attempt to keep you out.

What they don’t realise is that this comes as an unholy relief to parents.

Their bedrooms are the last place we want to be. In fact, we would happily never cross that threshold again. Unfortunately, the smell eventually becomes so overpowering that we have to.

Either that, or we wait until items of clothing start crawling from the room to the washing machine all by themselves.

In order to be totally realistic, should potential buyers be viewing on a Saturday morning, anytime before midday, there should be a body in the bed, buried under the quilt. No matter how much noise people make, it will not stir. Even prodding it with a broom handle will make no difference.

(And, believe me, I have tried).

The room will, of course, be in total darkness, with curtains closed.

Teenage boys, like vampires, don’t like sunlight. And ear-shatteringly loud music will fill not just the room, but the whole house, because boys set their radio alarms for 7am on school mornings, but can’t be bothered to reset them for the weekends.

There will be menacing posters on the walls featuring scary sounding bands with names like My Bloody Valentine and The Enemy. All drawers and cupboard doors will hang open, with the contents looking as though they have been ransacked by incompetent burglars in a hurry.

As I have already said, viewers won’t be able to see the floor for crumpled clothes, wet towels, football kit, papers, books and magazines, so the estate agent will have to explain whether it’s a polished wooden, plush carpeted or tiled option underneath.

Should prospective buyers want to inspect every nook and cranny as they seek out hidden electric sockets and check on paint finishes, I would advise them never, under any circumstances, to look under the bed.

That is where boys throw half eaten sandwiches, pizza, rotting bananas, apple cores, Cornish pasties and old drinks cans.

Some of it may have been there for years and now resembles a chemistry experiment which has gone hideously wrong, to the point where it is hard to work out whether some of the items are living or dead.

The authentic smell of a teenage boy’s bedroom is the hardest thing to replicate. Even if Abel Homes put genuine smelly trainers and stale, sweaty socks, along with essence of teenage boy hormones, washed down with a few extra shots of triple strength testosterone, they would have to supply viewers with protective masks. And Health and Safety officers would probably close the whole development down.

No, I think Abel Homes is perfectly right to stick to the neatly contrived unreality of their teenage boy’s room.

When we look at it, we can fantasise that all we have to do is make the bed, pick up a few T-shirts, brush a couple of crisps from the carpet and it’s pristine.

Show houses are all about dreams, the perfect home for the perfect family.

Save the nightmare of an actual teenage boy’s bedroom for the real world. And keep the door firmly shut.