Inside the scandal and rivalries of the Window Cleaning World Cup

The Usain Bolt of window cleaning is a 69-year-old man from Clacton called Terry Burrows. “What I’m doing, people half my age can’t do,” Burrows tells me over the phone. This squeegee samurai, who now has a stent in his heart following a heart attack nine years ago, is the Guinness World Record holder for the fastest window cleaning on the planet. “You don’t just do this,” he says. “You train to do this.” As he gears up for the 2025 Window Cleaning World Cup, Burrows is wondering if anyone will be able to take his shiny crown.

In the niche world of competitive cleaning, Burrows is something of a hero. He calls himself “Terry Turbo” and has appeared on TV consistently since the mid-Nineties, setting world records left, right and centre. A lifelong cheeky chappy, he is a gift to media broadcasters and has popped up on Heart Radio, This Morning and The One Show. (He was programmed with Usain Bolt, whose management, Burrows says, didn’t want him to go head-to-head in a window cleaning contest with Burrows.) He even wrote and released a song called “Bucket of Love”. “Terry’s a bit of a legend,” fellow cleaning professional Kevin Robson tells me.

At ExCel London, I wander around the enormous Cleaning Show, immersed in a world I never knew existed: stands and stands of scrubber dryers, sponges and telescopic water brushes, all manned by people showing off their wares to the anoraks of the sanitation universe. I’m told that there are “window cleaning influencers” here. “The future of hygiene is curved,” a mysterious message tells me in huge letters at the entrance. Not far from there are three 45in x 45in windows, where this year’s tournament will take place. This is the colosseum of the window cleaning world, and Burrows is donning his armour. Specifically, in fact, he’s being prepared for his imminent appearance on This Morning, where he’ll try to beat his world record before the World Cup begins.

I chat to Burrows before the event. He has spiky grey hair and is wearing a black Nike tracksuit with a white T-shirt, a gold chain, and a glint in his eye. “If I have a bad day, I’ll probably win anyway, ‘cause it’s just formality,” Burrows says. “But to go for the record is another level.” Thanks to his constant practising, he knows he still has his speed. He’s not a man lacking in self-belief. His attempt to break his record on This Morning, however, is an anti-climax. His world record of 2009 stands at 9.14 seconds; on live TV, despite doing the sign of the cross beforehand, he clocks in at 13.55. “I don’t know what I was on that day in 2009,” he tells me. There are even murmurings elsewhere that 9.14 is so good it is difficult to believe.

Burrows is far from the only man – it’s all men – vying for the Cup and the £1,000 that comes with it. Fifty-year-old Welshman Stephen Fox, who once appeared in a Lucozade advert swooping and gliding his squeegee around, is one of the figures always lurking near the top spot. Recently, he has been practising with ankle weights on his wrists, to make the cleaning even harder. He clarifies the format for me: all contestants must dip their applicator in washing-up liquid and water; clean all three of the windows; “run the ledge” (clean the window ledge from one side to the other); then hope for the best. (Their times are not revealed until everyone has taken part.) They are marked down half a second for each “blob”. Fox says his base time is probably eight seconds, “but my blobbage is probably eight seconds”. When Burrows cracked the world record his base time was 8.14 seconds, and he left only two blobs. “I think he probably does it in his sleep,” says Fox.

But there are challengers from further afield as well. The “French Massive”, as Fox puts it, is here: a group of young men all wearing gilets with their country’s name printed on. There is also an Estonian called Dmitri Jurjev and, also from France, a serious-looking man by the name of Frank Lauret. Lauret, it turns out, has won the International Window Cleaning Association (IWCA) competition – a comparable event in the US – 13 times. On this score, Burrows brings up some tension between himself and the organisers – not for the first time. “I went there years and years ago,” he says. “I’ve not been back since ‘cause it was very controversial. I told them the windows weren’t right, and they weren’t. So I got through to the finals and then they decided to just disqualify me because they said I wasn’t doing it right.” As with a lot of Burrows’ claims, I take this with a pinch of salt.

For the 56-year-old Lauret, who speaks to me through an interpreter, it is his first World Cup in England. He is here to win, but he doesn’t think he can finish the windows in under 10 seconds. His interpreter, who seems to feel more strongly about the subject than he, tells me that Lauret has “the world record” of 11.54 seconds. She implies that the Guinness World Record is more local and not as open to contestants all over the world. I make a note to mention this to Burrows.

When the World Cup kicks off, contestants are chosen randomly. Because, unlike Bolt running the 100m, everyone takes turns, you are at an advantage if you go later, as you will have seen whether the man to beat is the one who has gone fast and sloppy or slow and methodical. The window cleaners swoop their squeegee and applicator in an “S” motion, each man sprinting across the three windows at the end and shouting “Stop!” as though they are catching a thief. Fox comports himself well, and the young French men are unlikely to challenge for the title. When Lauret is about to begin, he squats like a Sumo wrestler and looks both fast and efficient. After each contestant has his go, the sight of three grown men all painstakingly checking the windows for blobs is an amusing one to behold.

Last but not least, Burrows steps up to defend his title. I noticed he had seemed nervous when Lauret was up, and when he finishes, I think he looks a bit frustrated. Is it going to be his year? We gather for the results. In third place, with a time of 15.25 seconds, it’s… “Terry Turbo” Burrows. Given his bravado, this is something akin to Muhammad Ali being knocked out cold. Who has beaten him? In second place, with 14.67 seconds, it’s the reliable Stephen Fox. That means that, at 14.48 seconds, the new World Cup holder is the Frenchman Frank Lauret.

When I speak to the champion afterwards, he tells me that he “wasn’t coming to lose”. Perhaps it’s the language barrier but Lauret seems to be as ice-cold as a Bond villain; not a man you’d want to mess with. Checking in with Burrows, I ask him how he feels. He had a good base time, he says, he just made “too many mistakes”. Fox’s base time was under nine seconds and Lauret’s was 11, meaning Lauret was slower but cleaner.

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Burrows is more bruised than his words reveal. “At the end of the day,” he says, “it’s just a World Cup. World Cup, tin cup – it’s not the Guinness World Record.” When I mention that, according to Lauret’s camp, Lauret supposedly has the real world record, Burrows’ hackles rise. “No. He doesn’t. No. He doesn’t have the real world record. No. He doesn’t have a Guinness World Record. I have that. He has a Mickey Mouse record.”

Burrows will be back next time, he promises, assuming he hasn’t dropped dead. And, when he does return, he will no doubt have even more fire in his belly, eager to take back his World Cup crown. After all – no pane, no gain.