Number 2 on our Music Blog Playlist is of course George Formby‘s classic comedy hit The Window Cleaner AKA When I’m Cleaning Windows.

The Window Cleaner first appeared in the 1936 film Keep Your Seats Please, and was so successful that it spawned a sequel, a song imaginatively called The Window Cleaner (No 2).

George Formby The Window Cleaner

A dance mix of the song sampling only the first eight lines of George Formby’s original vocals from the first version of The Window Cleaner surfaced in the UK charts in December 1994. It wasn’t as good as the original Window Cleaner!

If you need Office Cleaners or Window Cleaners in London, look no further than Millards Cleaning Services. Established in London in 1919, and based in Covent Garden, Millards Cleaning Services offer you professional, highly trained Office Cleaners and Window Cleaners at a competitive rate.

Call us now for a FREE QUOTE on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at www.millardscleaning.co.uk

All London Window Cleaners will be skilled in using a Bosun's Chair

The Bosun’s Chair originated in the Navy. A Boatswain is a warrant officer in the British or US Navy, or a subordinate officer in the merchant navy, responsible for most things that happened on the deck of a boat. A Bosun’s Chair was originally designed to haul a sailor up the mast on a halyard to do repair work or inspect the rigging. The first chairs were simply wooden planks with stout lines passing underneath it and up into a bridle at chest level. Early versions suffered from having no back support meaning that sailors would have only one hand to work with, the other holding on for dear life so you didn’t fall backwards out of the chair.

A sailor in a Bopsun's Chair later adopted by Window Cleaners all over London

Nowadays, fabric chairs are most common, with comfortable backs and padded seats for today’s pampered derriers. It’s virtually impossible to fall out of one now, leaving both hands free for work. Some models even have tool straps and built in pockets tailored specifically for the needs of the user. Our Window Cleaners have room for their squeegees, buckets, and chamois leathers. Everything they need to clean the windows of any building in London.

If you need Office Cleaners or Window Cleaners in London, look no further than Millards Cleaning Services. Established in London in 1919, and based in Covent Garden, Millards Cleaning Services offer you professional, highly trained Office Cleaners and Window Cleaners at a competitive rate.

Call us now for a FREE QUOTE on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at www.millardscleaning.co.uk

Open to all window cleaners who are registered members of the Federation of Window Cleaners, and all employees of registered members.

How to win the Window Cleaners of the Year 2012

Your employer must nominate you.
Only one window cleaner per company can be nominated.
FWC Executive members or their employees are not eligible.

Any window cleaners who make the final short list will be informed before the event and the winner announced at the the innovation awards dinner on Thursday 8th March 2012 at the Ricoh Areana, Coventry.

Prizes

One-night complimentary dinner and hotel for two people
24 carat Gold plated Squeegee
Framed certificate
Years free membership or, equivalent value gift voucher.

To find out more and to download an entry form, visit the FWC website.

Millards Cleaning Services will be sending our Number 1 guy. Providing all the entrants survive the rigorous selection process! Seriously though, we really think our window cleaners are the best. Don’t believe us? Call us on 020 7836 2601 or visit our website now for a Free Quote.

Millards Cleaning Services, for all your Office Cleaning and Commercial Window Cleaning needs in London.

Number 1 in the list is the very cool Van Morrison’s Cleaning Windows from his 1982 Album Beautiful Vision.

The song was a semi-autobiographical tune about Van Morrison’s life as a part time window cleaner when he was a struggling musician playing saxophone in bands at the weekends. Rock journalist Steve Turner says that in Cleaning Windows, Van Morrison “captured the balance between his contentment at being a window cleaner and his aspirations to learn more about music. It conveyed the impression that his happiness with the mundane routine of cleaning windows, smoking woodbine cigarettes, eating Paris Buns and drinking lemonade was made possible by the promise that at the end of the day he could enter the world of books and records.”

I'm happy Cleaning Windows - Van Morrison

Paul Macinnis with The Guardian wrote: “The message of the song is simple – the window cleaner‘s happy in his work – and the lyrical vignettes combined with delicate, upbeat R&B (with Mark “That ain’t working” Knopfler on guitar) convey that feeling wonderfully.”

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. And if you need a Commercial Window Cleaner in London, or an Office Cleaner in Central London, drop us a line for a free quote. You can call us on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website at http://www.millardscleaning.co.uk/</a for a Free Quote.

Martial Arts specialist, Terry Burrows, aka “Turbo Terry”, 54, smashed the record cleaning three individual, 4ft (1.2m) high windows in just 9.14 seconds at the 2009 window cleaning competition-setting the new world record for the Fastest window cleaner.

The record could’ve been an even greater 8.14 seconds, but Terry was deducted a full second after two water marks we left on the glass.

Originally from Essex, and carrying a black belt in karate, Terry has been cleaning windows for 30 years, he said his success was due “to moving the body in sequence”.

“I clean the windows in just 16 moves, and it’s pretty intense,” he said.

Terry was at annual Federation of Window Cleaners Conference and decided to try and beat his previous best of 9.24 seconds.

That’s pretty fast, even for a window that measures 45 square inches, but what makes Terry’s achievement even more impressive, is that competition rules state that he must THREE windows and wipe the sill. There are time penalties for leaving any water marks on the glass, and you are only allowed to use a maximum squeegee size of 12 inches.

Terry said: “I’m elated to have shaved so much time off my record. It’s extremely hard, it takes a while to warm up and I drove 270 miles this morning so I wasn’t feeling too fresh. By my fourth time, however, I was back in the zone and actually managed to clean the planes in 8.14 seconds with two half-second time penalties.” He smashed his first record in 1995 as part of TV show Record Breakers with a speed of 9.99 seconds.

In 2005 he broke his own Guinness world record for the Fastest window cleaner during The Cleaning Show at NEC Birmingham with a 9.24 second time.

Of this performance Terry said: “I’d never say never as far as beating my own record again goes, but at the end of the day, a man can only go so fast. “I would love to die with my world record and know I went as the world’s fastest window cleaner.”

Jamie David, 26, regularly cleaned the windows of an 82 year old woman, but began to take advantage of her vulnerability to make more money out of her.

One time, Mr David kept £3 the pensioner had overpaid him. He even returned and charged her £5 for the same job and didn’t even do the job.

Liverpool Crown Court Judge, Brian Lewis, “You stole or defrauded from her £8 – a trifling amount, of course, but this case isn’t about money, it is about the exploitation of the elderly and vulnerable in our society.

“These were mean offences for which your remorse has been limited. The message must go out that people who target our elderly and vulnerable in this way will face immediate imprisonment.”

Prosecuting Solicitor Joanne Maxwell told the court that Mr David had begun to clean windows in the Eastham area in April 2011, while he was the subject of a community sentence for shoplifting.

His offending was uncovered after the pensioner’s house was burgled. She reported the loss of her purse to her daughter, who contacted the police.

After the police arrested Mr David, he admitted to the two cases of fraud, but denied burglary, and the charge was later dropped.

His defence barrister Jonathan Duffy, said that David, who has a ten-month old son, had “legitimately” worked as a window cleaner.

“Having provided a service for proper payment temptation got the better of him,” he explained.

Here at Millards Cleaning Services, we believe in an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, and we’re sure that you’ll find our window cleaners and office cleaning crews trust worthy and value for money. For a Free Quote call us on 020 7845 7147 or visit our website: http://www.millardscleaning.co.uk/

Sleeping on the job!

For office cleaners or window cleaners who won’t get caught sleeping on the job, call Millards Cleaning Services on 020 7845 7147 or for a FREE QUOTE visit our web site http://www.millardscleaning.co.uk/

The sculpture, by German artist Martin Kippenberger, called When It Starts Dripping From The Ceiling, had been on loan at the museum when the cleaner made her terrible error.

As you can see from the photo, the sculpture is a tower of wooden slats with a rubber trough underneath it with a thin layer of beige paint representing dried rain water. Thinking this was an actual stain, the cleaner scrubbed the surface with a scouring pad until it gleamed!

When It Starts Dripping From The Ceiling

“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” a spokewoman for the Mmuseum said., adding that the damage had been discovered late last month and that the sculpture had been on loan to the museum from a private collector. She also said that cleaners had been sent a memo ordering them to stay at least 20cms away from all the exhibits, but it was unclear if the cleaner – who worked for a company to which the cleaning had been outsourced – had received the memo.

Kippenberger’s not the only artist to have their work ruined by cleaners, he’s actually in very good company.

In 1986 a “grease stain” by Joseph Beuys valued at 400,000 Euros was mopped away by a cleaner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf.

Hirschkuh by Joseph Beuys

In 2001, English artist Damien Hirst lost a load of beer bottles, ashtrays and coffee parts from the Eyestorm Gallery in London, after a cleaner cleared them away, unaware that they were part of a piece depicting the life of an artist.

And in 2004, a cleaner at Tate Britain chucked away part of a work by another german artist, Gustav Metzger, after he’d mistaken it for a bag of rubbish. The cleaner didn’t realise that a plastic bag full of discarded paper and cardboard was an integral part of Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art. The bag was later recovered but was too badly damaged to be put back on display, so it Metzger replaced it with another bag.

Recreation of the First Public Demonstration of Auto Destructive Art

Anti-doping officials have said that they’ll be training cleaners and other staff to spot suspicious behaviours and material, and encouraging them to report any findings.

Next year’s games will see a record 5,000 tests for performance enhancing drugs and researchers believe that testing based on intelligence gleamed from cleaning staff, as well as law enforcement officers will be more effective than ever before.

Anti-doping officials maintain that even with a “world record” amount of testing, the chances of catching any cheats are still very slim.

Speaking at a meeting in London, Jonathan Harris said that gathering as much information as possible from as many sources as possible, was paramount to catching as many doping athletes as possible. And this was where the cleaners came in.

“There will be intelligence sources coming from security and from cleaning for example – these are functional areas that have been involved in anti-doping in previous games, we will be educating those personnel in those functional areas so that if they should come across behaviours that are untoward they share that information with us”

There have been a number of occasions in previous Olympics where cleaning staff have come across materials that may have been evidence of doping. For example, at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, cleaners found blood transfusion equipment in the rubbish of a house that was being used by the Austrian Ski Team, who later had several team members banned for failing doping tests.

So here we go. This move seems to be popular amongst the less professional window cleaners out there, as we seem to see an awful lot of these. The old perch-yourself-out-on-the-sill-and-hope-for-the-best routine. Just one question though, how’s he holding on?!

Look Mum! No hands!

Another one where someone’s Mum is doing what a professional window cleaning company should be doing. Teetering on the edge, she’s in real danger up there. Would you let your Mum do this? NO! That’s right. Call the professionals.

On a window ledge beyond the edge

Now this one makes us really mad. Quite clearly a professional window cleaner, this bonehead is balancing precariously on the thinnest of thin beams high up the rafters of an office complex. Not how we at Millards Office Cleaning Services would do it at all.

Balancing act

But this is our winner for the week. High up above the streets of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, a couple of window cleaners hang on to bamboo scaffolding for dear life as they clean the windows of an office block in the city centre. These chaps are several stories above the bustling city streets, and are wearing no safety equipment whatsoever.

Bamboo Scaffolding

Bamboo Madness!

Remember, if you need your Office Cleaned, or your Windows Washed, get the professionals in. Avoid hurting yourselves. At Millards Cleaning Services we’re experienced, we’re insured, and it’s what we do.

Call us now for a free quote on 020 7845 7147

Or visit or website http://www.millardscleaning.co.uk/