Overcome by the emulsion

The Chinese may say that this is the Year of the Monkey, but for those of us whose Christmas credit-card statements have only recently arrived, it's the Year of the Pelican (on account of having a bloody great bill in front of us). My own financial downfall took place during the New Year sales, when I unsuspectingly wandered into Ikea (that Scandinavian love-child of Mr Habitat and Miss MFI, conceived during a brief knee-trembler in an Uppsala pine forest), and was led astray by two mendacious words emblazoned on their flat-packs: "self-assembly".

It's not true. Flat-packs do not assemble themselves. You have to do it, and your chances of erecting a £1,000 wardrobe by locating the T-shaped flanges while following instructions that look like a Second World War bombing plan and are written in a language tantalisingly close to English are zero.

Oh, and donning a denim shirt and affecting some DIY machismo won't convince your wife that you have the faintest idea what you're doing. She's known you too long to have much faith in you, or your erections.

Given that my only other foray into construction resulted in a cat-flap that only flapped one way (we spent a fortune on buying new cats that year, until we eventually figured out what the problem was), the amateur handyman's desire to ape the interior designer and building professionals has always struck me as a peculiarly British obsession. After all, few of us attempt our own surgery or dentistry, yet we're continually exhorted to take drills and hammers to our own bricks and mortar, so much so that BBC1 in the mornings has virtually turned into B&Q TV for social group C2.

One of the most poorly constructed of that channel's many "home improvement" programmes is Trading Up, an effeminate version of C5's House Doctor, with the butch Ann Maurice replaced by a pair of screamingly camp men-girls who shout at the cameras in frighteningly sibilant Morningside accents.

"I'm absolutely mental" is their watchword, and as there's little likelihood of us ever needing to remember their names for future reference, let's just call them Neil Doon and Phil McCaverty.

Yelling at us from a privatised council estate in Walsall, they began Friday morning's edition with the promise of showing us "how to dramatically improve the chances of selling your house". Naturally, I assumed they'd immediately be putting the property up on wheels and towing it South down the M1, but no - their dramatic improvement plans for Sophie and Mario's house involved nothing more elaborate than a few pots of paint and some froufrou accessories.

"We hate pine," they shrieked, as an attractive stripped wooden bed disappeared beneath a quart of gloss, but they clearly loved MDF, and showed us how to create "a very sophisticated look" by covering the stuff in glue and silver leaf (the result being so sophisticated that the silver was already peeling off as they proudly held it up to the camera).

"It's too green, I want cream," they roared in the bedroom, forcing the hapless vendors to grab brushes and repaint it until they were both overcome with emulsion.

Where House Doctor at least invites a series of potential buyers to view the property in its "before" and "after" states, Trading Up restricts itself to one possible purchaserwho doesn't even clap eyes on the place until it's finished.