How Clean is Your House?

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Aggie MacKenzie and Kim Woodburn, stars of How Clean Is Your House?

How Clean Is Your House? is a UK entertainment/lifestyle television programme in which expert cleaners Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie visit filthy homes and then clean them. The thirty-minute show is produced by talkbackTHAMES, the UK production arm of FremantleMedia (itself part of the RTL Group), and airs on Channel 4 and S4C. It was first broadcast in 2003 and was an immediate ratings success.

Each episode of the programme follows the same formula. Firstly, the viewers are briefly introduced to the residents of the home to be cleaned. Then, accompanied by an over-dramatic score of horror movie music, Kim and Aggie explore the abode on their own, examining the grime and often sniffing the foulest areas (this almost always leads to Kim stating that she will be physically sick, though she never is). Kim and Aggie then meet the residents before the cleaning begins, assisted by several professional cleaners. During this process, which takes up the bulk of the show, Kim and Aggie share tips for tackling particular cleaning tasks with the residents (and the viewers), often relying on traditional methods rather than expensive commercial cleaning products. At some point, Aggie takes swab samples from the filthiest areas of the house and has them analysed in a lab, allowing her to reveal to the residents what bacteria and other nasties lurk within. Towards the end of the show, the residents are shown around their freshly cleaned home. Each episode ends with Kim and Aggie visiting a few weeks later to check that the place is still clean and tidy (usually it is).

Kim, a former professional cleaner, takes the role of a dominating woman, scolding residents for letting their homes get so bad with blunt observations and humorous putdowns. While cleaning, she wears a white outfit with her trademark fur-lined rubber gloves and pearls. Another trademark of hers is to wink and flirt with the men in the episode, in good fun. Meanwhile, Aggie, who used to work for Good Housekeeping,and MI6, assumes the "dirt detective" role, performing such tasks as the bacterial analysis. The duo have become well-known in the UK, to the extent that they are almost always referred to as just Kim and Aggie.

The show is light-hearted and often camp, falling more into the entertainment category than the factual genre. Much of the appeal comes from the almost voyeuristic pleasure of seeing how untidy some people let their houses become (many have not been cleaned for years), though the cleaning tips add some practical value to the show.

The format has been adapted to many other countries. A United States version, starring the original Kim and Aggie, premiered in September, 2004 on the Lifetime network. This edition also airs in the UK on Channel 4. Both the UK & US versions air in Canada on the W Network.

A spin-off book, How Clean Is Your House?, written by Kim and Aggie, was published in 2003. FreemantleMedia has also signed licensing and merchandising deals with many cleaning product manufacturers and other companies.

In 2004, Kim and Aggie did a version of the series called Too Posh to Wash about personal hygiene. They also did a one-off special, When Kim & Aggie Went To Hospital, which aired 30 August 2006, about how to keep our hospitals clean.