By Jonathan Dockett
Ah, Location, Location, Location, a programme that suddenly becomes addictive for people on (or hoping to get on) the property ladder- that fabled area where irritating phrases such as character features’ and ‘adding value’ suddenly become VERY important.
Here are five things we’ve learnt from it so far.
1. If a couple have the sheer nerve to dislike the houses that Kirstie and Phil put forward, then Kirstie will barely disguise her contempt and tell the camera that ‘they don’t know what they want’. Phil, meanwhile, will endeavour to be diplomatic whilst looking as if he is crying on the inside. If these asides take place in a garden with a trampoline, Kirstie will always sit on it.
2) Over-the-phone negotiations with estate agents must always take place in the pub whilst surrounded by half-empty drinks and the strong whiff of desperation. Estate agents must never give a positive answer immediately – because the dramatic wait before the delight (or crushing disappointment) also needs to be present, albeit shorter than the ‘X-Factor’ standard length.
3) Second properties are almost always described as ‘crash-pads in the city’. Also, the types of people who have crash-pads are described as ‘professionals’ and, therefore, must be filmed walking down a busy street with a look of intense purpose in their eyes.
4) Kirstie has a huge destructive streak. If she were to visit the Taj Mahal, Sistine Chapel or the Leaning Tower of Pisa – she would undoubtedly suggest that two walls are knocked down in order to put in an extra bathroom. Phil, meanwhile, should not wear polo-neck jumpers. They make him look like a PEZ dispenser or, even worse, that bloke from Grand Designs.
5) Going on the show is the most powerful aid to fertility in the UK. Even if Kirstie herself is not pregnant, a baby or two will have inevitably appeared on the scene for any couple that she and Phil revisit a few months later. By this time, the female in the couple must look slightly different (usually a new hairstyle will do the trick). However, the man will still be wearing the same jumper he had on when they looked round the house in the first place.
Did you see the LLL where the guy interested in buying a house DIED halfway through? That was almost Foxes-levels of sadness. TV is too hard to watch these days!
6) The couple looking at the houses must start off with the bloody-minded conviction of Adolf Hitler before being reduced to the flip-flopping prevarication of Neville Chamberlain when it comes to actually buying the bloody thing.