WHETHER it’s blood-drenched crime scenes or decomposing bodies hidden for years under piles of rubbish, there’s nothing too shocking for Ben Giles.

The extreme cleaner, 50, has never turned down a job in more than 25 years – even if it means contending with thousands of flies, putrid stenches that make others puke or unearthing human remains.

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Ben Giles is the ultimate extreme cleaner and hasn’t turned down a job in decades Credit: Ultima Cleaning

Human bodies, post-death, release 15 gallons of liquid – drenching whatever they landed on

Ben finds bloody crime scenes especially tough to deal with thinking of what victims suffered Credit: Caters News Agency

Stains and odours from decomposing bodies are among the many off-putting jobs they have tackled Credit: Ultima Cleaning

Ben believes his upbringing on a “skint farm” in Cardigan, Wales, set him up for tackling grizzly and gory tasks that few others have the stomach to deal with.

Back then, he dealt with animal “births, deaths and everything in between”, including pulling out dead and alive lambs, but his first extreme cleaner job was certainly a baptism of fire.

While working as a 50p-per-pane window cleaner after dropping out of school at 16, Ben was asked to clean an assisted flat with such a foul stench that the neighbouring residences were empty.

“I was told it smelled really bad, but I didn’t realise how bad it was until I got there,” Ben, who has just released memoir The Specialist: How To Clean A Crime Scene And Other Messes, tells us. 

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“The carpets were moving with fleas, the bathtub was full of faeces, and the toilet was so overfilled there was like a pyramid on top of the seat. 

“I turned around, and one of the lads had thrown up in his full-face visor mask. It was all over his nose, and he was choking on his own vomit. 

“I thought, ‘Great, more vomit to clean up’. Everything in the flat was disgusting. It was so bad that the warden couldn’t go in there for a decade.”

It took Ben and his pal a whole day to complete, and after, when asked for a price, Ben quoted £2,000, expecting to be bartered down – but they paid up.

He had found a “gap in the market” where people would cough up whatever it cost to rid themselves of savoury problems others didn’t want to deal with.

“I thought, if someone is willing to pay £2,000 for that, what’s the worst thing we can clean up? Crime scenes? Dead bodies? I knew I could handle anything,” Ben says. 

Now his company, Ultima Cleaning Ltd, turns over around £4.5million per year, has around 100 staff on its books and completes around 200 jobs each week all over the UK. 

Decked in a double-layered Tyvek polythene body suit, double-thick gloves, shatterproof goggles and heavy-duty boots, Ben’s team are ready for any cleanup. 

Typical jobs can include cleaning huge sewage spills, leaking ruptured pipes in top-end restaurants, hotels, accommodation and businesses, as well as tackling some of the most disturbing crime scenes across the country.

In one property, where a lady with learning difficulties lived, they discovered the remains of her deceased mum. 

Her corpse was buried among possessions, which filled each room up to three-quarters full.

“No one had seen the mum for years, but the daughter was continuously telling people she interacted with her every day and that she was fine,” Ben says.

“Within a few hours, we uncovered bones – someone’s leg, buried among hoarded material. 

“The smell of a decaying body is hard enough to deal with for a couple of hours, let alone a long time like she did.” 

In other incidents, they found a body that had lain undiscovered for 15 years. All that remained was a skeleton in an armchair wearing an intact leather belt and leather shoes. 

And one man, who had been dead for eight weeks, had his “face and legs eaten by his dogs”. His remains had decomposed into the carpet. 

Filthy flats and bathtubs are regular sights for Ben and his team Credit: Ultima Cleaning

In some hoarder properties, rubbish fill rooms up to two-thirds deep Credit: Ultima Cleaning

His team are called out to clean up blood spills after pub fights, dead animals on the motorways and gruesome crime scenes Credit: Supplied

Ben recalls some flats being covered in animal muck, and one individual stored their urine in bottles Credit: Ultima Cleaning

While Ben says he relishes the problem-solving aspects of the callouts, crime scenes are “incredibly difficult to deal with”.

“There are families whose babies have been mauled by their pets, and violent crimes, which are horrible and tragic situations. You’d never wish it on anyone,” he says.

He tackles those tasks by working from the front door inwards – cleaning blood spatter on the doors, door frames and architrave and then moving into each room following the route of the crime. 

“When blood spatter is everywhere, it’s hard not to think of what someone has been through and the amount of pain inflicted upon them,” Ben says.

“You’re working your way into the violence and are able to see what happened through the pools of blood, from where a person fell, until the spot of the final episode of their lives.”

In other chilling scenes, Ben has been asked to clean blood following fights outside pubs and discovered sinks, showers and rooms soaked in blood.

He’s been called out after tragic suicides – including a man who left post-it notes with arrows leading to his body in a “makeshift parlour” – a wigwam inside a kids’ paddling pool, in a room full of mirrors. 

Sometimes Ben is a last resort when other cleaning firms have failed – including at a West Country property, where a man died but the odour remained.

As a body decomposes, it produces 500 chemical compounds and around 15 gallons of liquid is released, which soaks into whatever the body is lying on.

Recalling entering the property, Ben says: “I knew the scent right away – body fat, I’ve smelled it so many times – but there was an odd tinge to it, which was unusual.

“This man had died of a heart attack and fallen onto an old three-bar heater, which partially burnt through his body. 

“His body fat had evaporated and gone into the walls, which were a dark magnolia colour, and under the floors.”

It took around five hours to clean and required him to break through a concrete floor to reach an area where fat had seeped through the cracks. 

Hoarders can be especially difficult to deal with – not only due to their supersized stockpiles but also due to their unwillingness to throw items away. 

After filling an entire skip with one lady’s belongings during the day, she crept out at night and returned all of the items to her home.

“Hoarding obsessions can differ,” Ben says. “Some people love round objects, like tins or coins, and sellotape them together. Others can’t even throw away their faeces. 

“I’ve found five or 10 chest freezers with frozen faeces all wrapped in newspaper and 700 two-litre bottles of urine all stacked up.”

Such an extraordinary line of work unsurprisingly draws countless questions from friends, and Ben relishes seeing their “jaws hitting the floor” as he recounts the craziest tales. 

It’s why he’s penned a memoir, The Specialist: How to Clean a Crime Scene and Other Messes, which covers his “really nuts and crazy job that not many people could do”.

For all the intrigue in the dad-of-two’s job, there’s one person who isn’t keen on hearing the details.

He says through laughter: “My wife Lindsay hates hearing about what I do and as soon as I’m home, I’m told to strip off and get in the shower – that’s where my day’s events have ended for her.”

Among the most memorable callouts was clearing a 22-tonne and 22-metre-long dead whale, which had been struck by a cargo ship and carried into Portsmouth Harbour.

Ben’s team had to use a motorised saw to cut through the whale’s jawbone so it could fit in the large lorries Credit: Ultima Cleaning

He even helped to remove a 22-tonne whale, requiring him to saw it in half Credit: Ultima Cleaning

Ben, who initially thought the request was a joke, dispatched a team with knives to cut the carcass in half and a motorised saw for its jaw.

A crane hoisted the corpse into two heavy-duty bathtub lorries. But there was a bigger challenge, aside from the clean-up.  

“We had to absorb everything that came out of the whale, too; nothing could go back into the water. The amount of fallout would have created merry hell,” Ben says.

“We were also cautious after reading about a story in Japan where a carcass, due to being full of gas, exploded while being driven through a town and covered everything with bits of whale.”

Other times it’s more deranged, like when a fired supermarket worker, near Cheltenham, broke into their former workplace in a revenge plot.

“They decided to bottle their urine and mix it with faeces, put it in a washing-up liquid bottle and squirt and spray it all over the produce,” Ben says.

“Then, the employee managed to get a horse’s head and dragged it all around the supermarket in protest and left it there. Sometimes we get really bizarre stuff.”

Other times it can be extreme filth – especially in properties occupied by pets, where the “carpets are sodden with urine and muck” and their owners open cans of food directly onto the floor.

Ben recalls the flat of one lady, who had “around 40 cats”, being so “covered in muck” that she even had faeces “between her toes in her jelly shoes”.

“Everything was completely covered, but the cat trays were clean,” he says. “I asked why, and she said the cats stopped using the litter tray when her husband started using it.”

Ben admits he didn’t expect his business to boom when he began in the 1990s, believing the odd job would pay for holidays or cover a month’s mortgage here and there.

His company was acquired by Atlas FM in 2021, which reported a £380million turnover last year, and he’s considered an expert authority in the game – including speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival next month.

Ben’s company Ultima Cleaning turned over £4.5million last year Credit: Ultima Cleaning

Ben has released a memoir recounting stories from his ‘crazy, nuts job’ Credit: Supplied

Ben and his colleagues have been consulted for TV series like A Life of Grime, Grimefighters and The Cleaner, which starred BAFTA TV Awards host Greg Davies.

He adds: “Our Scotland team ended up working with Danny Boyle on the Trainspotting sequel – they wanted to know about real-life drug dens and if their set looked realistic. 

“It’s nice to see the craziness getting brought to life on screen and flattering to feel like an industry leader and that we’re showcasing professionalism.”

The Specialist: How To Clean A Crime Scene And Other Messes by Ben Giles (HarperNorth) is out now. Ben is also appearing at the How to Clean a Crime Scene event at Cheltenham Science Festival on 2 June – find out more here: www.cheltenhamfestivals.org