MAIL ONLINE: Oh, the irony — TV's Queen of Clean admits mums like her are to blame for raising slovenly sons

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Dr Laura Watt, of the University of Manchester, is a social scientist with a special interest in family dynamics. She says that perhaps the best hope for making housework appealing to men would be another show just like How Clean Is Your House? — only with male cleaning experts presenting it. That way they'd make doing chores look cool.

Because it's not the case that mothers not teaching their sons to clean are completely to blame for the gender inequities, she insists. There's also an ingrained belief, subconsciously persuading us that some jobs are masculine and others are feminine.

That's something the woman in Britain's top job — Theresa May — reinforced last year when she insisted that there are such things as 'boy jobs and girl jobs' around the home.

'There's still a prevailing culture that puts men somehow above doing something as menial as cleaning,' Dr Watt explains. 'Unless it starts being seen as being creative and trendy, the way cooking now is, then men just aren't going to want to step up and do their bit.'