The first rules of f lat club

I’ve never been good with names, and fool myself I’m better with faces. Having flatted with a cast of thousands for over three decades, the scary truth is that there have been a couple of flatties whose faces have drawn an absolute blank.

When confronted with the former life I have apparently shared with them, I have grinned politely and fluffed it, making vague inquiries into the era and type of hacienda that we shacked up in.

You’d think I’d remember who I broke bread, or in this case, a lot of mince with. But no. One might conclude that these flatmates must have been so incredibly dull and beige that they left no trace or imprint upon my jaded memory banks.

Or perhaps their sin was that they were really fine upstanding flatties who took short showers, paid their share of the bills on time, and left no trace of pubic hair on the soap.

It’s the wrong ‘uns you remember. The absolute stinkers who didn’t put their name to any bill and left you short; who never accompanied you on the big shop and ate all your grub; who borrowed your car and brought it back three days later with an empty tank and a ticket.

Back in the day, those rotters got away with it and lived on to fight another day, leaving their wake of destruction behind them, never seeming to get their well-deserved comeuppance.

Now there are apps to the rescue, the most recent the Mogeo, which so far is free and asks wannabe flatties a heap of specially designed questions to apparently deliver up a compatible flatmate. Their approach is science-based data, instead of going with your flawed gut instinct.

I come from an era where an algorithm sounds like a failed form of natural family planning.

And I don’t hold out much hope for an app that relies on people giving truthful answers, so practised have we become at manipulating personality tests.

And even if you did get to flat with likeminded people with the same values, who came from the same background, and had a similar shared vision of their hopes ’n’ dreams – where’s the fun in that? A waster in the midst is somebody that the group can all pull against, and bitch about how mean, lazy, hopeless and stupid the slacker is. Do you really think a bunch of foodies sitting round on couches rating how good their signature dishes are is better than going head to head with a member of a tribe you’ve never come across before? You are so wrong.

Living with people you have nothing in common with and pretty much dislike on every level teaches you tolerance, makes you stick up for yourself, and work out what you won’t stand for.

When you’ve had it up to there with the shower blocking from gross amounts of pubic shavings. When the carpet stinks of rubbed-in cigarette ash from the ‘‘non’’ smoker.

When you suspect your flatmate of pinching your best knickers off the line, wearing them, and that your precious garment is involved in the sound of coyote howls coming from her bedroom. When your flatmate votes to the right of Genghis Khan, or the left of Karl Marx, or doesn’t bother voting at all. That’s when you start to understand the first rule of flat club.

The first rule of flat club is: there is no compatibility. The second rule of flat club is: there is no compatibility. The third rule of flat club is: always leave the toilet seat down.

The JamiLee Ross brouhaha of a few months ago came provocatively close to doing an Americanstyle expose ...