It’s a sign of the times, perhaps, that it isn’t Kim and Aggie who are sent in to the two family homes to ask How Clean Is Your House? (Channel 4, Thursday, 8pm), nor to offer their usual fabulous tips: eg, dropping a false teeth cleaning tablet in to your coffee maker will render it pristine.
Instead, a pair of doctors – one a molecular virologist – and a finger-printing forensic team turn up. This is, after all, a “coronavirus special”.
Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, Dr Lisa Cross and the finger-printers no doubt mean well, and offer a whole heap of excellent advice, their mission to show us how to prevent the virus from coming through our doors – and if it enters, how to zap it. But by the time they are done you can’t but conclude that the least safe place for any of us to be this weather is in our own homes.
The Coombes and Christof families already do so much deep cleaning you would quite literally be happy to eat a rasher sandwich off their kitchen floors, the sparkle from which would blind you. But, they learn, it just isn’t enough.
They are sent out for a walk while the forensics team move in, and when they return they find their homes littered with stickers to show where they had missed bits during their cleaning sessions. Radiators, thermostats, door handles, light switches, kettle handles, toilet flushers, bannisters, piano keys, appliance handles, remote controls, iPads, phones, toys, keys, and the like.
“We’re not trying to catch you out, we’re trying to empower you,” says Dr Lisa in an attempt to reassure both crestfallen couples who are on the verge of booking in to a Travelodge. But then she takes them up to their bathrooms and tells them that if they don’t put their toilet seats down after they flush, “tiny particles of poo could go back in to the air and land in your mouth”.
With couple one (Lisa and Chris) and couple two (Mel and Matt) now on the verge of passing out, Dr Lisa quickly adds that there is no evidence that “the virus has mutated to have this mode of transmission”. But........ “it might do”.
It is, of course, always better to be safe than sorry, so, after this, there’s not one of us who will leave our toilet seats up during the flushing process. Certainly not Lisa and Chris and Mel and Matt, who are left feeling like their bathrooms are ticking timebombs.
When Dr Javid, Dr Lisa and the finger-printers leave, we see Lisa and Chris and Mel and Matt scrubbing the bejaysus out of their radiators, thermostats, door handles, light switches, kettle handles, toilet flushers, bannisters, piano keys, appliance handles, remote controls, iPads, phones, toys, keys, and the like.
How clean are their houses when they are done? Like a coffee maker after a brush with a false teeth cleaning tablet. Pristine.
