Cambridge is right to room-shame dirty students – I should know, as I was a uni cleaner

Top marks to the housekeepers at Fitzwilliam College, who have had enough of their disgusting undergraduates and posted photographs of the filth they have to deal with. Paul Clements, who spent two summers cleaning up after students, says it can be like something out of a particularly evocative Pulp song

Channel 4’s Fresh Meat: ‘In my experience of cleaning up after students, the hardest thing was plugholes…’ writes Paul Clements (Channel 4)

Students are a revolting bunch. That much we know. But at Cambridge university’s Fitzwilliam College, housekeepers – housekeepers! – have had enough and gone rogue over the state of the digs they are expected to make habitable. And, as someone who has worked as a cleaner, I am here for it.

Some properly filthy photographs taken by cleaning staff have been doing the rounds as an illustration of “what housekeeping do not want to see on their weekly visits”.

The shared kitchens are said to have become a particular flashpoint, which I presume means that the mass of dirty plates and pans competing for sink space needs killing with fire. In addition, one student’s room had become infested with slugs, not, one assumes, because it was overburdened with juicy houseplants.