House Rules: On telling the truth about houses

We all know what "deceptively spacious" means, and a host of other property clichés besides. So, when I read an ad from Bowe Property in Bandon on myhome.ie, describing a two-bed detached in west Cork's Ballinacurra as "a property that at first glance refines the word ugly", I wondered if they had been reading Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's recent columns, or maybe even Roy Brooks's absolutely brilliant collection, Mud Straw and Insults.

Brooks was a London estate agent whose adverts in the Sunday Times and Observer, during the 1950s and 60s, became required reading. Gems such as "Darkest Pimlico. Seedy family house", "One of the filthiest houses I've seen for a long time", "Fashionable but slightly sordid Islington," and a house that is "all right, so long as you don't have to live there […] pop round once a week & collect the money", can't fail to raise a smile, albeit a wry one, in anyone who ever has been, or currently is, pounding the pavements in search of their own desirable residence.

Telling the truth proved incredibly popular, and Brooks had a queue of people clamouring for him to sell their homes. Who could resist the lure of “Wanted: Someone with taste, means and a stomach strong enough to buy this erstwhile house of ill-repute”? Or how about a “Cheap flat with posh address [in] what is euphemistically termed ‘the lower grnd. Flr.’?”

Brooks made fortune enough from his unconventional way of promoting his clients and their houses ("Beer magnate & refined lady sculptor and former teetotaller forced move nearer his brewery …"), that he drove a Rolls Royce, and attracted a slew of celebrity patrons, including theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, actress Billie Whitelaw and TV's Desmond Wilcox, whose corner bar Brooks described as "a white painted brick feature for holding exotic drinks. Rather theatrical and in keeping with the pretentious style of the owner". The pair were good friends.

It looks like the truth can be lucrative after all. And the “ugly” house in Ballinacurra? A snip at €139,000.