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- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Kim Woodburn obituary
Kim Woodburn, who has died aged 83, found fame in an unlikely way. She had just turned 60 and was earning £1,000 a month as a cleaner and housekeeper for an Arab sheikh in Kent when an independent production company interviewed her about fronting a new reality TV show. 'How long have you been cleaning?' she was asked. 'Too bloody long!' replied Woodburn. 'I've worked for some dirty beggars in my time.'
After a screen test, she was paired with the journalist Aggie MacKenzie, who wrote cleaning tips in Good Housekeeping magazine, to star in the Channel 4 series How Clean Is My House? (2003-09), entering homes – accompanied by horror movie music – to discover the worst excesses of human filth and squalor.
They were dubbed the 'queens of clean' and the 'Trinny and Susannah of the manky scullery' when they found a fossilised mouse down a sofa, a giant moth dead and spreadeagled in a bag of cornflour, kitchen walls dripping in oil and fat, rooms untouched for years, and one home overrun by a menagerie of animals, with hay and newspaper spread across the floor.
Woodburn went in as the cleaning troubleshooter, armed with bleach and scouring powder to join other professionals applying elbow grease, while MacKenzie was the 'dirt detective' taking bacteria samples and sending them away to a lab for testing.
Both were dressed in white overalls and wearing rubber gloves. While MacKenzie looked like a librarian, Woodburn was distinctive for towering above 6ft in her high heels, with blonde hair scraped up into a bun and dishing out caustic put-downs for homeowners.
She was also the one who took them to task, responding to one of the first couples who blamed tiredness following a hard day's work for their filth: 'A lot of people work very hard. You make the time to do your house. You're lazy. I'm appalled. I wouldn't cook a dog's meal in that kitchen.' The first series regularly attracted audiences of four million.
But the last of the six runs was marred by a serious falling out between the pair – when they spoke to one another only on camera. This followed their appearance as the Ugly Sisters in a Cinderella pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, over Christmas 2007-08 – such was their celebrity status – when MacKenzie apparently missed a cue and Woodburn shoved her with such ferocity that she almost fell over.
MacKenzie said they had clashed frequently, but this festive fracas was the final straw. Channel 4 subsequently cancelled How Clean Is Your House? to look for 'the next generation of groundbreaking shows'.
Woodburn's temper later reached boiling point on Celebrity Big Brother in 2017, when she tore into her housemates. It culminated in her calling them a 'two-faced bunch' and 'chicken-livered shits', before she was hauled away by a security guard.
Shortly afterwards, Woodburn – who finished third – was interviewed about it by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the ITV daytime programme This Morning. When the discussion became heated, she said: 'Don't mess with me. Don't think you're going to bully me – I've been around too long.'
Then, the following year, Woodburn was asked to appear on the ITV lunchtime show Loose Women to make amends with the singer Coleen Nolan, one of its panel, whom she had personally called 'two-faced' after their time together on Celebrity Big Brother, which Nolan won. But, far from making peace, Woodburn launched a tirade of abuse against Nolan and the other housemates, then stormed off the set saying: 'I wouldn't want to sit and talk to lying trash like you.' Turning to the audience, she added: 'You think what you like. She's a horrible person.'
Despite their own clashes, MacKenzie said: 'Kim was a tormented soul. Behind the fierce persona was deep pain and incredible strength.' She was referring to the abuse suffered by Woodburn during her early years, revealed in her 2006 memoir, Unbeaten: The Story of My Brutal Childhood.
Woodburn was born Patricia Mary McKenzie in Portsmouth, the second child of Patricia (nee Shaw) and Ronald McKenzie, a Royal Marines commando who fought in the second world war, and she was known as 'little Pat'. Following the birth of a son, the couple divorced – her mother was volatile and her father philandering – and Pat Sr had half a dozen more children with her new partner, James McGinley.
In her autobiography, Woodburn described her mother as 'an evil, vicious woman who'd starved me of love throughout my childhood and beaten me'. She believed her 'crime' was to have been born a girl, not a boy, and to look like her father. The abuse became worse as her mother drank more.
Aged 15, she walked out, took a job as a live-in cleaner in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, then moved to Liverpool, working at Woolworths and a fashion store, and as a beautician, social worker and model.
Her book also revealed that she became pregnant at 23 by a boyfriend who then left her. She went into premature labour and had a stillborn baby whom she wrapped in a tea towel and buried in a park. This revelation led police to investigate four decades later, but no charges followed.
In her 20s, in an attempt to forget her mother, she changed her forename to Kim – after the American actor Kim Novak. She became a professional cleaner in 1984 and her jobs included an 11-year stint in the US, with a film director among her clients.
Once fame came with How Clean Is Your House?, she and MacKenzie presented a spin-off series, Too Posh to Wash (2004), tackling issues of personal hygiene, and When Kim and Aggie Went to Hospital (2006), a one-off critique on cleanliness and hygiene. On her own, she made a similar series, Kim's Rude Awakenings (2008-09), in Canada and came third in the 2009 series of I'm a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here!
Her first marriage, to Ken Davies in 1971, ended in divorce four years later. In 1979, she married Peter Woodburn, who survives her.
Kim Woodburn (Patricia Mary McKenzie), professional cleaner and reality TV star, born 25 March 1942; died 16 June 2025
