"Bone Idle" versus "a psychiatric condition" .

In the world of Kim and Aggie, hoarders with filthy houses are just "bone bloody idle". In the American version of 'The Hoarders', similar slobs have a psychiatric condition. 'How Clean is Your House?' is a British show in which Kim and Aggie tackle a dump of a cesspool of a dump of a cesspool every week and clean it up. I'll get to 'The Hoarders' later, but first a peep into the muck and mire of Kim and Aggie's weekly mess. I absolutely love the show!

Kim appears in jewelry and died blonde hair, dolled up to beat the band. She dons rinestone rubber gloves and gives the home owner s-h-one-t. "Shut your gob," is followed softly by, "my love". Aggie swabs every surface and comes back with billions and billions and billions and billions of different bacteria -- all analyzed by special hospitals -- found thriving and multiplying on every surface. Don't get me started on the toilets!! I can't even go there. I am only talking about the kitchen counters! Nightly visits by ugly mice just enhance the domestic scene. Gag me.

So, the hapless owner stumbles around while Kim extoles the virtues of vinegar, tea, lemon, nail polish, bleach, grapefruit juice and bicorbonate of soda. Shoe polish is also used. "Well, I just sort of lost touch", says the idiot who lives there. Kim gives absolutely no quarter. He or she is a "lazy slob, my love,". Bone idle and useless also emerge as descriptors.

The American version of Hoarders has everyone suffering from a psychiatric malady. Please. Each show features mostly women weeping and moaning over three-year-old yogurt. Gag me again. Of course, we have the usual motely crew of victimologists and grief counsellors, all wading through tons of paper, shopping debris and decades-old purchases. Vermin and children are a-one. But instead of giving these women a slap upside the head, they are given to believe they are suffering from a mental illness. Whaaaaaat? Naturally, they all suddenly act mentally ill and begin to weep over the fifty pairs of shorts they bought last year and the one hundred newspapers they hadn't had time to read and the 250 cans of cat food they had left open on the floor for the 75 feral cats and the 10 family albums they were trying to sort and the christmas decorations they hadn't put away and the shoes and socks they planned to deal with and the bathroom they hadn't cleaned in five years and the kitchen stove they couldn't find anymore.... and on and on and on and on and on.................

But, as Kim says, "Darling, you are just bone idle," See, that's the difference. After Kim and Aggie leave there is a sense of accomplishment. They then return a few weeks later and find that Joe-Blow is still keeping up. The American hoarder has a sense of entitlement that empowers them to get right back into hoarding -- just to prove they were actually mentally ill and deserved a TV show afterall.

Just shoot me.