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Homeless charity Shelter has hit out at the Autumn Ideal Home Show with a graphic poster campaign outside the west London exhibition. The large-format posters dominated the exit from the Earls Court underground station that leads to the show and included images of neglected housing with words such as “vile”, “sick” and “nightmare” on top of an Ideal Home logo. The Shelter campaign kicked off on 8 October, the show’s opening day, with contestants from reality TV show Big Brother handing out a spoof magazine, Room For Improvement. Shelter director Adam Sampson said: “As a nation we’re obsessed with DIY and home improvement and last year spent more than £400m on it every week. Yet only a fraction of us are aware that more than one million children are suffering because of bad housing. Children for whom there is no such thing as an ideal home and a decent home is a distant dream. It is only by bringing this scandal to the heart of the housing debate that we can create change.” The set of posters form part of Shelter’s ‘million children’ campaign, which it launched in April. Ideal Home Show organiser DMG World Media responded: “We are disappointed that Shelter has chosen to attack the show. For the Autumn Ideal Home Show, we are working with a charity that focuses on housing issues for children in its work. Radio station Capital FM’s Help a London Child is the show’s designated fundraising charity.” Shelter staged a similar protest in Glasgow on 15 October when the Ideal Home Show arrived at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre.