W hy are British homes so blighted by damp and mould? Blame the climate, humid and getting wetter every season. Blame the building industry, cutting corners and scratching their heads since records began. And blame the homeowners for, among other sins, paving over their front gardens right up the exterior wall of the house, leaving increased rainfall nowhere to go but indoors through inadequate damp-courses and cracks. Blame millennials taking too many showers.

One homeowner, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently investigated a stranger than usual musty smell in her teenage son’s bedroom. To her horror, she found a disturbing mustard-coloured mushroom-type growth proliferating between the back of his wardrobe and the outside wall.

“That would be a peziza, usually called elfcup fungus,” says Nicholas Donnithorne,

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