Nowhere to stay? Try your local Ikea!

Picture the scene.

You have to move out of your apartment ... fumigation ... best not ask. You live in New York City, and all your friends live in similar studio apartments. No spare beds ... and the hotels are too expensive. What’ll you do.

I know, pop down to your local Ikea with two suitcases and move into one of their spacious show bedrooms for the week!

Now it helps that he’s a comedian and filmmaker called Mark Malkoff ... and even better when Julie Mott, the deputy store manager of your local Ikea, phones up and offers you bed and the chance to play laser tag with the security guards when the store is closed at night.

Malkoff is perhaps best known for visiting all the Starbucks stores in Manhattan in a single day as part of his 2007 film 171 Starbucks.

A camera crew are following him: some of the footage is being uploaded to his website.

An article on CNN’s website explains that Malkoff has found some snags living in a show house (which will put any AiB readers off volunteering to inhabit the mock home in the Belfast Ideal Home Exhibition later in the year):

The sinks don't work, and neither does the toilet, refrigerator, flat-screen television or the washer and dryer.

“Is anything real in this place?” he asked.

And according to ITN, Mark should feel right at home amongst Ikea furniture:

“... he’s familiar with the Billy bookcases and Malm chest of drawers as his flat back home is made up of 80 per cent Ikea products ...”

But the common sense in the family definitely lies with “his wife of 2½ years, Christine, [who] isn’t as thrilled with his new digs and has instead opted to stay with relatives in upstate New York.”

He arrived on Monday 7th, and will be staying in the New York store until they close up on Saturday 12th.

And if I ever need any work done to the house, it’ll be straight around to Paul Reid at Holywood Exchange to see if he has a spare room. (Not that he responded to any “comments to the manager” on the store’s opening blog.)