Money matters

Angela Rippon, Gloria Hunniford and Julia Somerville are back this morning for the ninth series of the consumer rights show. We chatted to Gloria ahead of the series’ return, and she told us that making it to nine series is proof of just how important

Rip Off Britain is.

“We came in at the beginning of a recession,” recalls Gloria. “And I think we just hit an enormous need at that point.

The success of this programme, I have always believed, is that we don’t take cases from newspapers, we take them from viewers – so if you ring in about your energy bill or your travel insurance or whatever, you can bet that hundreds of people will identify with you.”

Gloria herself was the victim of fraud last year when impostors stole £120,000 from her savings, and she’ll be discussing that case as part of the upcoming series.

“One of my sons said, ‘You got your money back, what are you worried about?’” Gloria tells us. “But I spend most of my professional life warning people about scams and what not to do, it’s my duty to show how simple this one was and how there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. Mine still hasn’t been solved, in as much as one woman and her alleged daughter are still on the run, and despite the fact that it went out on

Crimewatch a couple of weeks ago, they still haven’t had any positive leads. I feel violated that this woman is running around somewhere with a fake driving licence, with her photograph on it but my details. That makes me feel very vulnerable.”

One of the things Gloria hopes viewers take away from the series is that scams are always getting more advanced, and that even savvy consumers can fall victim to a convincing trickster.

“We warn people all the time that banks will never call you and ask for account details over the phone,” she points out. “Despite that, unfortunately people sometimes get sucked in, and afterwards they say,

‘How could I have been so stupid?’. But they shouldn’t really feel like that, because the scammers are just so clever.”