Let’s start with the fact I am rich. Not mega rich. Not London rich, where at least someone reading this paper will have had it delivered by their butler to bed. But richer (marginally) than the average Londoner, who earns £49,000. Rich enough to be able to rent a flat, which is richer than the poor sods in their early twenties — 63 per cent — still living with their mum and dad. I am a professional (apparently).

And so, I gave myself a not unreasonable (I thought) budget of £2,000 a month for a London flat. Note, the average monthly mortgage payment is £1,500. And I plan to fund my return to London by renting out the five-bedroom Somerset cottage I bought during Covid (because after four years I’m bored with the countryside and want to come back). Turning to the Tinder of rentals, Rightmove, I began swiping. If you live in London, you already know the punchline to this joke: I was living in fantasy land.

Confirmed - This is the deadliest snake in the worldInteresticle

I see flats with living situations so preposterous they stretch the definition of ‘bedroom’, ‘kitchen’ and ‘flat’

For £2,000 a month, Rightmove spews out a shocking array of unliveable hovels so unbelievably rank they make you want to call up Andy Burnham and beg him to relocate, not just Parliament, but all of us to Manchester. (Where £2,000 could probably get you a five-bedroom house).

In London for the same money, the options are dire. I’m presented with a line-up of kitchens with beds masquerading as “studio flats”. Are the estate agents who write these property particulars, describing them as a “superb studio”, on crack?