The human stain remover: what Britain's greatest extreme cleaner learned from 25 years on the job | Tom Lamont

"Job by job, he figured out when to scrape or sand, soak or fog, preserve or dispose. Boilersuited and plastic booted, Giles learned how to eliminate most evidence of spillages, collisions, protests, haemorrhages, severings, explosions, fires and floods, becoming a self-taught stain savant, a walking database of remedies. When you have lifted a layered lasagne of toilet paper and semen from the floor of a submarine yard in Barrow-in-Furness, there's not much left in the world that can scare you."

"When the entrance to a theatre in London's West End was discovered to be smeared with blood and faeces one day in March, a distress call went out to the headquarters of Ben Giles, a 49-year-old veteran of the extreme clean, who is based in Cardigan in Wales. Decades earlier, as a young know-nothing, hired by police to clean vehicles, Giles laboured for hours to remove fingerprint dust from the interior of a stolen car work that now, with the experience of innumerable litter-dashed, liquid-sodden, gunge-roped scenes, would take him about 30 minutes."

Ben Giles is a specialist in cleaning extreme biohazard and mess scenes, operating from Cardigan, Wales. He responds rapidly to urgent incidents such as a human defecation smeared across the entrance of the Dominion theatre before evening performances. His team logs arrival times and scene details to coordinate fast remediation. Giles learned skills over decades, progressing from window cleaning and property clearances to removing fingerprint dust and layered biological contaminants. He developed judgment on when to scrape, soak, sand, preserve or dispose, and handles spillages, collisions, protests, haemorrhages, explosions, fires and floods.

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