I plug in the iron, check the water level, turn the setting to ó what else ó cotton. Then pause for a few moments to let it get hot.

The room where I iron is a barren one. No furniture, just the ironing board. A "room we haven't figured out what to do with yet," having just recently bought this house...

...The finches in the back room start to peep as first light looks in the windows. Time for me to go.

How pleasant to sit on a cold December day in a warm and welcoming room, listening to the servants going about their work: the washing machine roaring and whirring and at moments of excitement even advancing a little across the floor; the dishwasher clunking and clanking and buzzing to show it has finished; the fridge, though a less demonstrative creature, positively purring with pleasure...

And yet in the midst of all this automated activity there still sits the obdurate, unreconstructed iron, as incapable now as it was in the 19th century of getting on with its business unless compelled and propelled. So many old chores have been swept away: this one remains.And remains, I had always supposed, predominantly for women...
Yet that isn't so any more. Over the past 12 months, it appears, the young men of Britain have developed a taste for ironing.

I love ironing. About once a year. That's about how often I actually get round to it. The rest of the time the pile of it grows in a corner of my spare bedroom like the European Butter Mountain. But crease-y, rather than greasy.

With stunning locations and beautifully turned out athletes, this film follows the fortunes of ìStarchî, ìPower Cordî, ìIron Matronî and ìSafety Settingî as they struggle with their delicates and make battle against the highly organised German and Austrian ironists.

Extreme ironing was invented in Britain, but, like football and cricket, it already seems that Johnny Foreigner is better than us.

We cut our teeth helping build great brands like Advil, CorningWare, Robitussin and Eskimo Pie. Hey, if we can get a bowling ball on Letterman and a new iron on CNN, there's not much we can't do.

Next, I randomly split the ironing into two piles - the "Yes" pile and the "No" pile, then put on a relaxing CD. I start ironing the "No" pile. As I begin to iron, I visualise that the trousers or shirt that I'm ironing is a worry over which I have no control. As each wrinkle is smoothed out, I see that particular worry becoming less and less important. I have no control over it, so as the wrinkles get ironed, I gradually let the worry go.