How brave Kim Woodburn overcame dad's horrific sex abuse & heartbreaking secret health battle to become TV icon

The Sun

17-06-2025

SHE was the Queen of Clean long before influencers like Mrs Hinch and Marie Kondo.
Kim Woodburn, the domestic goddess who got Britain scrubbing and organising their homes died yesterday, age 83.
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Along with friend Aggie MacKenzie, she pioneered the TV genre with
How Clean Is Your House?
The pair would don their rubber gloves and go into the most disgusting homes to help out the owner with Kim's catchphrase 'scrub dear, don't tickle.'
Becoming a beloved television star was not really on the cards for the
young Hampshire girl.
She was brutally honest about her incredibly difficult childhood and
how she overcame them to become one of TV's highest paid
presenters.
AN ABUSIVE UPBRINGING
Born Patricia McKenzie in Eastney, Portsmouth, just before the end of
the Second World War she was physically abused by both her mother,
Mary, and father, Ronald.
It comes as...
his arms like I saw other dads doing with their children.
'He never once sent me a card on my birthday or a note to say he was missing me.
'My mum didn't really care very much. I was the youngest of two
daughters and my mother, who drank a lot, made it clear she preferred my sister Gloria to me.
'My mother's favourite expression was, 'If I'd known what you were
going to be like, I would have sent you back'.'
As she grew older she learned her father was a serial womaniser who
'had a reputation for being as randy as a butcher's dog.'
Kim Woodburn IAC legend slams 'woke' TV bosses
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He then started sexually abusing her.
She said: 'My dad was a Royal Marine and a rough and naughty man.
'He'd have a touch of the old naughty bits with me when he could get away with it. I was very young and I remember my mum used to beat me with the carpet brushes.
"I never told her, I didn't know how to. When I was a little girl, we didn't discuss that.'
She was born with no sight in one eye but was too scared to mention it to her parents.
It was only at school that it became clear she had a problem.
She said: 'With so little concern shown for my welfare, I didn't dare
mention that I couldn't see very well.
'I had a squint in my right eye and so did Gloria but because my
mother loved her she got her eyesight sorted out aged five.
'I just had to cope, and I'm sure my schoolwork suffered because of it. I used to be called 'Squinteye' by other kids as my eye used to wander around.'
Her parents eventually split up and Kim and her sister Gloria ended up in foster homes before their mother remarried.
But the abuse began again as her new stepfather began beating her.
BEATINGS AND DRUNKENNESS
She said: 'You can't shrug off all those years of neglect and brutality. I may put on a front but inside I'm angry – and I think I always will be.
'I was abused for as long as I can remember, from when I was two and
a half or three years old.
'There were beatings and drunkenness. I could never understand why it was happening to me. They never laid a finger on my sister.
'It hurt deeply when I would see a mother kiss her little girl. I'd think,
'nobody's ever kissed me'.'
After one drunken beating she ran away from home at the age of 17
and became a cleaner which came with its own accommodation.
But her trauma didn't end there. Six years later she became pregnant
and had a stillbirth. Terrified at the consequences she buried the child's body in a park.
She said: 'Being an unmarried mother years ago was terribly shameful.
'You were a whore and a man would only marry a virgin.
'I lowered my precious boy in and wrapped the towel around him
before slowly replacing the earth.
'It was a very sad part of my life. I would never go back to visit the
spot where it happened. That would just be too much.
'I couldn't do it.
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A NEW BEGINNING
To rid herself of her traumatic beginnings she changed her name to
Kim, after the actress Kim Novak, and vowed to start afresh.
She divorced her first husband in 1975 before finding the love of her
life with policeman Peter Woodburn, marrying in 1979.
She worked in various jobs, from social worker to make-up counter
assistant then a cleaning agency which told her that Channel; 4 were
looking for someone for a new show.
With co-host Aggie MacKenzie How Clean is Your House? became an
instant hit when it was launched in 2003 and she became Channel 4's
highest paid female presenter.
Her brusque style on camera was more than matched off it with
frequent spats with her co star.
Aggie said: 'I think we're chalk and cheese, and so different from each
other, but I think that was one of the reasons why it worked.
'Because of the friction there was between us, it created this energy
and so we knew how to be in front of the camera.'
By the final series in 2009 the relationship had broken down
completely and they were only talking in front of the camera.
The final nail in the coffin came during a run in pantomime in Brighton in 2007 when Kim pushed her violently as she came off stage.
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Aggie, who acknowledged Kim's difficult upbringing may have affected her behaviour, said: 'I was so shocked and upset and angry.
'I lost my rag with her. I said, 'You've really overstepped the mark
now!'"
Her explosive behaviour off screen became apparent during a stint in
Celebrity Big Brother in 2017 when she had to be removed from the house by security following a particularly foul-mouthed tirade calling fellow housemates 'chicken-livered s***s.'
Her clashes with Nicola McLean were so bad that the former glamour
model threatened to quit the show after being forced to see a doctor due to anxiety.
Her time on Loose Women also didn't run smoothly with clashes with
Big Brother winner Coleen Nolan.
In August 2018 she stormed off the Loose Women set after an awkward reunion with Coleen.
Kim said later: 'I will say this now – how that woman won Celebrity Big Brother when Jedward were sitting there, I have no idea!
'Public, I don't know how you let that boring, Fag Ash Lil – with that I
know now to be a rotten mouth about her about me – win. She
shouldn't have won. It should have been Jedward.'
Kim built up a large following on social media with 85,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram as well as selling video birthday greetings for £25 a piece but stopped in February due to ill health.
Just last year she said she was going to grow old disgracefully after
spending £35,000 on plastic surgery to stay looking young.
She told The Sun's Celebrity Big Brother Breakdown podcast, in
association with Press Box PR, she's already had a neck lift, eye lift and botox.
She said: 'I've spent about £35,000, but do you know what? I don't
regret it.
'I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by saying 'I'm 82 and I
look like this naturally.'
'Don't be ridiculous. The secret is surgery.
'I've got a few bob so why would I want to walk around like a wrinkled
old prune when I've got the money to look fabulous.
'When you lie in your coffin you rot away and wrinkle, well I'm not in
my coffin yet, dear, so I want to look as good as I can on earth.'
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