This latest programme represents a new Nadir in televisual lifestyle viewing. If anything reproduces neoliberal ideology at the level of the lifeworld it’s this – for ‘house’ you can read ‘debt fuelled consumption’ and for ‘win’ you can read ‘competition is good’ – and that’s even before we get onto the subtler normalisation of the construction of the self through the conspicious consumption of material objects and the lampooning of the working class – for details read on!

The show’s web site says ‘May The Best House Win is the daytime ITV1 series (ok I caught it on a Sunday morning rerun) that sees the owners of some of Britain’s most interesting and unusual homes compete against each other in a bid to win a cash prize.’

In each episode four proud homeowners open their doors to each other and let them cast a critical gaze on their property masterpiece – they score the property out of ten and the winner gets a £1000 cash prize.

The one episode I watched witnessed one working class woman (she ran a fancy dress store – so self employed – successful w.c.) in a relatively ordinary house – one upper middle class woman living in a perfectly presented family home (mod cons to the hilt – having a particular fetish for odd taps), an interior designer (at least I think that’s what she was, but frankly I couldn’t give a toss)  living in a flat which she had spent 20 years filling full of arty objects including a mural on of the walls, and in what must be the ironic gesture in world history -a 3 ft tall glittery Buddha,  and finally some woman who lived in a 3 story Georgian mansion with a pool which had featured on footballers’ wives.

The show basically consisted of the working class woman being pilloried by the commentators as she paradaded around the decidely more opulent middle class homes  loudly demonstrating her lack of middle class taste and manners while the other three got all luvy-duv with eacother, by the end of the show they were offering up their deference to the 3 story Mansion dweller (‘ My daughter goes to school up the road’ said the only-middling-upper-middle-class-interior designer- ‘and of all the houses I go past (no doubt in her Chelsea Tractor) this is the one I always wanted to look inside’) 

Incidentally, the working class woman turned up to the Mansion with a general look of disbelief on her face (last to arrive after editing) and was shown walking in the door to the ‘Mr Ben’ theme tune (for those of you that remember Mr Ben*) – no, you should not be incredulous about those that are more successful than you – even if the only way they can afford a house like that is by trading in children’s organs.  

Anyway as if this genre of programmes wasn’t bad enough for giving us unrealistic ideas about the average standard of living this little number ramps things up by overtly lampooning the poorest, working class, member of the foursome invovled.

Lets remember that the norm in British housing is that

• One third of people do not own their own homes!
• 43% of people that do own their own homes are on interest only mortgages and thus struggling to survive.

These programmes can only serve to give us an unrealistic idea of what’s normal and foster negative emotions such as materialism, greed and jealousy – oh and hatred, but I won’t say what I want to do the producers – but let’s just say I’ve thought up some pretty creative uses for that glittery Buddha…

*For those of you don’t Mr Ben was a character who went to a fancy dress shop, put on a certain costume and was transported temporarily to a different world, depending on the costume he was wearing. I remember the ‘space man’ episode being particulary thrilling, although I don’t remember anything about him going to three story georgian mansion land though.