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Kim Woodburn |
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Kim was born in Eastney, near Portsmouth. She first noticed the joy of cleaning while watching her fastidious grandmother, who cleaned schools for a living, soaking clothes, scrubbing the step and polishing like crazy. ‘She sparkled,’ exclaims Kim. However, Kim’s first job after leaving school at 15 was in a high-class fashion shop, ironing the clothes that would be displayed in the window.
She took up her first live-in cleaning job after moving to Liverpool, cleaning ‘from breakfast time until the end of time’. A variety of jobs followed: at a toy factory, a holiday camp, as a beautician, a social worker, even a model in the Littlewoods catalogue.
Kim also started knitting, and founded a handmade knitwear company. As a tall lady, with a, shall we say, bigger than average bust, she couldn’t get anything other than frumpy cardies to fit, so she started her own range. In 1983 Kim made her television debut modelling her range on Pebble Mill At One, with Jeff Banks. It was 20 years before television would redisover Kim Woodburn.
In 1979 Kim married her husband, Peter. They are so inseparable that they decided to give up their shift working (he was a policeman) and moved to America, where they kept house for the rich and famous. They returned to Britain eight years ago and currently look after a sheik and his holiday home in Kent.
Before the How Clean is Your House? screen test, Kim was told she would be meeting someone called Aggie. ‘I thought she was the presenter and I was the cleaner!’ Kim recalls saying to the girl whose filthy flat it was: ‘You’re 26, but you won’t see 30 living in all this muck and filth.’ Needless to say she got the job on the spot.
When asked if she has ever employed a cleaner herself, Kim isn’t impressed, ‘Don’t insult me!’ When she leaves her home in Pembrokeshire to go and care for the sheik, Kim covers everything in plastic and vacuums herself out of the door. Asked if she isn’t just a tiny bit obsessive about cleaning, she replies, ‘I don’t worry about being called obsessive, as long as I’m clean, I’m happy – and I’m having the time of my life!’
