X Factor duo John and Edward Grimes were freshening up their careers in the recording studio - with Shake n' Vac.

The 18-year-olds, known as Jedward, showed their inimitable buoyancy as they took to the task, weeks after they were axed by record label Sony.

Born more than a decade after the commercial was first released in 1980, and unfamiliar with the original jingle, they nonetheless insisted the carpet freshener played a significant part in the Grimes household during their early years.

Bouncing down Dean Street, central London, sprinkling the cleaning powder, they said: "It's a lot of fun - that's what we are all about.

"It's a really iconic advert. When we were younger we would use this stuff - we used to clean the stairs.

"We had five dogs and we would let them in the house and it would smell bad and then we would use Shake n' Vac and it would make the carpet smell nice."

And they insisted they were obliged to pull their weight at home, adding: "We did way more cleaning than our mum - we had to do it."