That's why Thompson makes referrals, so to speak, to the Couch Doctor.

If the answer is "no," the company either recommends another couch or suggests a house call from the Couch Doctor.

He was ready to dump it when his doorman told him about the Couch Doctor -- a.k.a.

You might need a Couch Doctor

After the movers had gone, and the "couch doctors" had successfully broken our couch to get it inside, Ethan and I sat in our new kitchen, eating pizza, missing Gracie at our knees.

Outfits with names such as the Couch Doctor and Dr Sofa, and equipment such as staple removers and electric saws, are charging up to £300 to dismantle and reassemble.

In a city of pre-World War II apartments with narrow doorways, modern high-rises with low ceilings, and elevators so small they belong in Old Europe, the Couch Doctor is vital.

Beside the couch Doctor Winchester lay on his back as though he had sunk down and rolled over; and on the farther side of the sarcophagus, where they had stood, lay Mr. Trelawny and Mr. Corbeck.

Sal Giangrande calls himself the New York Couch Doctor, but in fact he's New York's Doctor Whatever-It-Takes for desperate people like Clarke, who couldn't shimmy his old couch into his new apartment and wasn't willing to give up either one.

The Couch Doctor's competition includes Dr. Sofa, "the furniture surgeon"; Z Bros. (the owner's grandfather used to build sofas); and Unique Furniture Service, another small operation that switched to hand saws after customers complained that the buzzing of electric saws scared them.

In New York this is a thriving, perhaps recession-proof business that has attracted energetic entrepreneurs, like the Couch Doctor, who compete for business by thrusting their business cards at doormen and convincing chain furniture stores like Crate and Barrel and Restoration Hardware to use them exclusively.