Dirty cleaner goes viral

The carpet cleaner caught on camera. Photo / Supplied

The carpet cleaner who did indecencies on the job after logging into a customer's internet connection is now an online hit himself.

The man's weird antics were shown on TV3 show Target this week. Since then, nearly 150,000 people have gone to the internet to view the show through the channel's Ondemand service.

Target showed him rifling through drawers and a laundry basket, picking up dirty panties, then accessing the internet and masturbating.

He appeared in the Manukau District Court this week on charges of burglary and wilfully accessing a computer. His name has been suppressed and he was bailed to reappear on June 6.

The Herald on Sunday has learned, however, he is now living apart from his pregnant wife.

TV3 spokeswoman Rachel Lorimer said the show rated well, rivalling MasterChef for the half an hour when the two shows were on at the same time.

The demand continued after the show. "I believe [website administrators] had to give it more capacity because too many people wanted to watch it at once," Lorimer said.

"The previously most-viewed content for our Ondemand service were Campbell Live's Kim Dotcom interview and episode one of The GC."

However, viewing figures on the night were not a record. "Target is a long-running high performer and has attracted audiences of this size and larger many times."

Target executive producer Laurie Clarke said he was genuinely surprised the scenario - which was supposed to compare several contractors at work - had provided such a shock on the first appointment.

"These cases don't happen very often these days. In our first year of Target we had three or four cases like this but it's gradually declined that we might get one or two a year, perhaps. He was the first one who had gone through and it was just so dramatic we thought we can't really not show it and to do another comparison with other carpet cleaners would be just a mockery of their work."

Clarke said the house was rented by the show for the comparison segments and was intended to emulate a normal house. It was real dirty laundry.

"We rent the house for a period of time and we set it up with someone living there. It is expensive to have a house set up with cameras so we can only do it for a limited period of time."