Ben Giles, a 49-year-old extreme cleaning veteran based in Cardigan, Wales, has spent a quarter of a century tackling the most repulsive messes imaginable, from murder scenes to whale blubber. His journey began in his 20s as a window cleaner, when a client asked him to clear a vacated property with a bathtub full of human waste. He quoted £2,000 for the job, later realising he could have asked for much more. This experience taught him that people will pay handsomely for the restoration of order in their stickiest hours.
Giles built his empire from these humble beginnings, founding Ben Giles Cleaning in the late 1990s, later renamed Ultima. With his deputy Mark Baxter, he established a training academy in the 2010s, producing around 600 freelance cleaners for rapid deployment. The company was eventually absorbed by Atlas, making Giles wealthy enough to buy an Italian restaurant and a herd of Highland cows. He now serves as Ultima's chief consultant, a professor emeritus of mess.
In March 2025, a typical emergency arose when a person defecated outside the Dominion Theatre in London's West End, smearing faeces on the doors just before an evening performance of The Devil Wears Prada. Giles's team logged the incident at 4.32pm and dispatched cleaners with mops and buckets by 5pm, completing the job within an hour. 'Within an hour of the call it was done,' said Baxter.
Even in partial retirement, Giles remains on call for advice. While the Dominion crisis unfolded, he received a text from a former trainee dealing with solidified phlegm in a residential property in north-east England. The tobacco-coloured spit covered walls, doors and ceilings. Giles's response was pragmatic: 'Thinking of scraping or even sanding it.' His vast experience has made him a walking database of remedies, from fingerprint dust to layered lasagnes of toilet paper and semen.
