When the then ’we’ were a twenty something couple in 1985, we went to see some grotty flat but with huge potential in Muswell Hill which was up for £60k. I was a police officer and she was a police clerk. £60k eventually seemed unattainable for us when we went into just how much a deposit we would need to even get a mortgage, so we had to go no further. My parents lived in a council flat nearby and didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together, and her parents were divorced, with her father having a new family he long prioritised over her. I can’t remember now exactly, but to get a 90 percent mortgage at around nine percent, we would have needed £6k to put down, I think, and that was just impossible. Plus all the other costs of property purchase on top. We ended up having to move miles from London and getting a one bed cottage you couldn’t swing a Simon Biagi in for £32k. We then got hit by interest rates hitting 15 percent a few years later, in a house worth less than the mortgage and compounded (literally) with a second loan we took out soon after moving in.. Hence, when I see those picky young types on shows like Escape to..and A Haddock in the Sun, helped by thousands from their parents, you may understand I often hope the spiral staircase has been well oiled for them.