A Dirty Secret

I’ve always secretly liked a certain type of rather trashy TV programme. You know the type, some hapless person/couple/family can’t live in/sell their house because basically they are drowning in filth/toot/assorted crap. What it takes to sort out this mysterious and unfathomable situation is for some overpaid highly skilled presenter to look around the place and say “Bloody well tidy up! Tidy it! Now!” Then, hey presto, they all live happily ever after.

At one point there were loads of these programmes. The House Doctor and Andrew Winter were selling houses/Selling Houses, or if you just wanted to clear up your filth rather than actually move away from it, you could try The Life Laundry or undergo the Kim and Aggie experience. I loved ’em all. (Just don’t tell anyone – it’s a secret. OK?)

What was the appeal? Frankly it wasn’t the cleaning up and transforming of people’s homes that grabbed my attention. No, it was a morbid fascination for the grot that did it for me. Why did I find the fact that some hapless woman was living in a room full of bird poo so delightfully awful? I can’t explain it, but I did. I loved laughing about the people who were mystified as to why no-one wanted to buy their filthy house. I felt unbearably smug as the presenters tried to persuade people that they didn’t really need eleventy-nine skips full of tat in their front room.

Anyway, time passed and I eventually gave up watching these TV shows, but a couple of weeks ago I found something even better.

The ever entertaining Photoshop Disasters pointed me in the direction of It’s Lovely, I’ll Take It; a blog full of the rather inappropriate photos that some people use to promote their houses on their estate agent’s/realtor’s websites. Go on, go and visit, it’s brilliant. My particular favourites are the house in need of some updating, the dead fish, the rubbish PhotoShopping and the giant dog. Oh and the chair, mustn’t forget about the chair’s vacation.

So there you have it, the Three-Legged-Cat owns up to her strange and inexplicable fascination for peering in through virtual windows and looking at other people’s dirt and decay.

(Yes that was it. What sort of dirty secret were you expecting? )

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