You've ruined my home

Take one shamed former MP and his motormouth wife, two flamboyant home makeover experts and an apartment that was once a monument to middle-aged chintz.

The result? One of the most memorable slanging matches that TV viewers will ever see.

Neil Hamilton and his redoubtable wife Christine agreed to allow a Channel Five crew to revamp their Battersea flat.

The Hamiltons are reality TV veterans - she, memorably, ate grubs in the jungle on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.

But that experience did not prepare her for the attentions of Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan, best known for turning £100,000 into £1 million for BBC2's Million Pound Property Experiment.

The designers' reaction to the couple's one-bedroom flat was unequivocal - they hated everything. The scarlet piped sofas, the squishy floral cushions, the carpeted bathroom floor and the fact that the "crazy" Hamiltons had decided to wallpaper over their bathroom tiles.

They also cast aspersions on the cleanliness of the kitchen.

Mr Ryan concluded: "This is the most boring dump I've ever seen in my life. It looks like council offices."

Mr Ryan and Mr McAllister's vision was rather more radical. In the living room, originally said to resemble an old people's home, they rapidly dispensed with the loudly patterned rugs, chintzy curtains and plethora of ornaments.

Instead, they envisaged a pared-down, and rather hard on the eye, fuchsia and black colour scheme.

Mrs Hamilton was immediately on the offensive: "I don't want any of your beige, awful grey," she warned them. "Look at what you're wearing. It's awful."

Relations soured further - Mrs Hamilton was variously described as an "old bitch" with a haircut like "Mrs Thatcher", the "mistress of misery" and a "heat-seeking missile in slingbacks".

The Glaswegian interior designers in turn were described on the show as "absolutely vile", " fastidious" and "ridiculous".

In one exchange, Mrs Hamilton said that a black and bright pink carpet in her living room was "horrendous".