How Clean is Your House? [Hardcover]

In How Clean is Your House Kim Woodburn and Aggie Mackenzie "The Nation's Dream Cleaning Team" continue the mission of their popular Channel 4 television series--to educate, inform and generally browbeat us all into cleaning properly. The double act (dubbed "Trinny and Susannah on Domestos" by one pundit) need little by way of introduction. Kim, who wears pearls and sports the type of ridiculous Beehive-cum-wasp-nest hairstyle that hasn't been seen on the box since Bet Lynch graced the Rovers Return, is the bruiser. To ladle on the 70s TV trivia, Woodburn is Bodie to the finicky wee Scot Mackenzie's Doyle--if The Professionals had been a pair of hygiene-obsessed middle-aged women and forgone the pleasures of driving Ford Capris through cardboard boxes choosing instead to give the u-bend a good going over.

Here Kim and Aggie do actually include a series of Crime Files; factoids of horrifying information, usually about "beastly bacteria", which are destined to make you at least question, briefly, the wisdom of opting to leave your dishes soaking overnight after that joyously wine, port and a whisky or seven-for-the-road-fuelled dinner party. "When you let dirty plates sit for a long time the food contributes nutrients for bacteria, so they will rapidly multiply". It's therefore best, they suggest, to "wash all dirty dishes in hot soapy water as soon as possible." (Paper plates are, of course, always an option.) Divided into chapters that cover each room and full of astonishing top tips, such as using a banana skin to dust plants ("the dust" apparently "clings to the skin and the juice nourishes the leaves") it will have you on the way to meeting their notoriously exacting standards. But, a note on the back of the jacket kindly reminds us to give this volume "a dust every now and then" and under no circumstance use it "as a coaster or a dinner tray." --Travis Elborough

"Doing the housework is the new going out." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Hundreds of handy tips to make your home sparkle from the stars of the hit show How Clean is Your House? Kim and Aggie have taken the nation by storm, watched by over 4 million viewers every week as they transform filthy holes into gleaming palaces. Here, their fabulous tips for every cleaning situation imaginable are compiled, sweeping through a house from top to bottom, fluffy marigolds, big hair and lots of white vinegar at the ready. Filled with advice, fun and 'Kimmisms' - Scrub dear don't tickle - it's the perfect present for any home

Aggie MacKenzie has worked on many national magazines, and was associate editor at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where all the latest appliances, cleaning products and gadgets are tested. She now writes a column for The Times. Kim Woodburn is a professional cleaning lady, and has kept house for Hollywood moguls and even a sheik in Kent.