This is The Guardian.

Hello, my name is Claire Longerick and I'm the deputy editor of the Guardian Long

Read. This December, we wanted to bring you our top picks of the year from the audio long read.

Today, I've chosen a story by Tom Lamont, called The Human Stain Remover,

what Britain's greatest extreme cleaner learned from 25 years on the job.

Tom Lamont is one of those writers who'll turn an idea over for some time, sometimes years, before it takes shape as a story.

Often there is a curious, surprising and intriguing character at the centre of the pitch.

It's always a joy to hear him say, I found a guy.

The guy at the centre of this piece has an unusual profession.

He's made a specialism of removing stains

that most industrial cleaners can't or can't bear to reach.

The anecdotal detail, as you'd expect from a Tom Lamont story,

is a joyful parade of yuckiness, an array of seeping, pooling and organic explosions.

Tom is a master of the list.

I can't resist giving you an example which demonstrates the art of escalation.

Boiler-suited and plastic booted, Giles learned how to eliminate most

evidence of spillages, collisions, protests, hemorrhages, severings, explosions, fires and floods,

becoming a self-taught stained savant, a walking database of remedies.

The bigger picture is an unflinching look at what the mess we make says about human frailty.

What kind of person devotes themselves to clearing up after us and the effect it has on them?

This piece truly goes to places most stories don't.

In the editing process, we did have some back and forth, asking,

...