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1. The house parent
Aka the self-appointed leader of your home. House parents, being very responsible and mature (booooring) do have their advantages: they make sure Tower Hamlets Council doesn't send round the bailiffs, and that household armageddon (running out of loo roll) is avoided. Sadly, these advantages are cancelled out by the endless passive-aggressive Post-its that coat the flat. Waking up to 'Please wash your dishes, Hannah, I thought we'd been over this already' on your door is no way for a grown adult to start a day in the capital. It's enough to put you off your Coco Pops.
2. The hairy one
At first glance, they just look like, you know, a regular human, with a regular amount of follicles. But somehow, this housemate manages to shed more hair than the Abominable Snowman crossed with Hagrid, which means that using the shower after them requires a minute of fishing around in the plughole with rubber gloves, hoping that's a fistful of head hair that you're holding.
3. The hoarder
The most impressive thing about the hoarder is their stealth. It might start out with a box of books behind a door in the living room here, a couple of decorative bowls on a windowsill there. But before you know it, you can barely open your front door for the shitshow of knick-knacks that have colonised every surface of your home. If it gets so bad that walking from one side of the living room to another becomes an obstacle course that even Bear Grylls would balk at, the best thing to do is move out, before you're crushed under a tidal wave of Tamagotchis and models of Big Ben.
4. The hermit
The only way you really know the hermit is still actually living in your house is when some of your Cathedral City goes missing. Other than that, this awe-inspiringly antisocial beast leaves little trace. What goes on behind the hermit's closed bedroom door is anyone's guess, and you'd probably rather not know. On the plus side, that's one less person to yell at about dirty dishes when you go on your annual cleaning binge.
5. The hornbag
We're all for a healthy sex life and everything, but having to listen to someone else's healthy sex life at 3am when we've got to get on the Central line in five hours really does take the Michael. One of the most upsetting things about living with the hornbag, though, is the two questions posed by their nocturnal antics: where do they find all these people to have sex with? And why don't these people want to have sex with us? The best remedy is a consolatory packet of Rich Tea and some earplugs.
By Flo Wales Bonner, who always washes her dishes.
Take a look at the top five London exercisers.
Illustrations: Nathan James Page