That's a hard one to sell

REMEMBER a show called House Doctor, originally shown in the early days of Channel 5?

- Mike Ward

Ancient repeats of it still crop up fairly often at the crack of dawn.

Its premise was simple. Presenter Ann Maurice, a Californian “real estate stylist”, would visit Brits who were struggling to sell their properties, to advise them as to where they were going wrong.

Where they were going wrong, it would invariably turn out, was in imagining that prospective buyers not only shared their taste in decor but wanted to see all their tat, clutter and gubbins lying around.

Her message (and ours, to be honest, since we'd be yelling pretty much the same thing at the screen), was essentially identical every time — namely, neutralise the place.