Don’t get angry at my ‘poverty safari’ – be outraged that people go hungry
MY MOTTO is ‘When in hole, keep digging’, so here goes. A short time ago, the legend that is Michael Buerk came to chat to me for the Radio Times prior to two documentaries being shown on BBC1 this week, called – cringe-making title alert – Famous, Rich And Hungry.
The shows feature businessman Theo Paphitis, who was on TV show Dragons’ Den; actress Cheryl Fergison, formerly of EastEnders; reality TV star and model Jamie Laing ‘ off of’ Made In Chelsea – and . . . me.
A production company took our money, phones and laptops, and packed us off to live with families in food poverty. (None of the participants received a penny, by the way – it’s for Sports Relief.) And then we came home.
Over tea, Buerk looked over his mug with his intelligent, grey eyes, and asked me what I felt.
‘There’s this terrible sense of human waste. They’re existing rather than living,’ I said, but you can’t hear the crack in my voice when I said it. ‘Apart from the telly and the cigarettes, they’re living like animals.’
Then I went on to say that some had expressed envy of my ‘poverty safari’ (yup, my own words) as they felt I’d had a meaningful, even enriching, experience they couldn’t buy.
It was, as many – including Vanessa Feltz, on talk radio – decided, ‘a helluva thing to say’. I am, as I type, being trolled by haters on Twitter. One woman asked: ‘When are you going to apologise? I’m so upset, you disgusting person.’
WELL, this is my first attempt since the row started. What I saw was this. If you have no money, none at all, your whole life is impoverished. Most of the time my hosts – Dee in Deptford, in South-East London, and Mick and Jackie in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex – had only pence in their pockets.
They were full-time crisismanaging and hunter-gathering, while the woolly mammoth of the State, or big companies, seemed at every turn to be trying to take away the few remaining scraps they had.
They couldn’t even afford to stand and stare because each day was a series of non-stop setbacks – disconnection notices, expensive calls to electricity companies, bailiffs, letters saying benefits were being halted or cut. Jackie had a shoplifting conviction for nicking bacon and washing powder from a Tesco Metro. A £100 fine, outsourced to a debt collection agency, was now £600. She was summoned to appear in court in Colchester (£13 train ticket) the next day. If she didn’t pay the fine, or appear in court, she could go to prison.
Carly, a single mother from Croydon, was informed she was being evicted by her private landlord during filming. Paul in Grantham had only got one lung. He received £51 a week on benefits, but thanks to a prepayment meter and arrears, £48 of that went on ‘the electric’. He had three quid a week to live on.
On day two I suggested to Dee that we took her daughters to see the Cutty Sark. ‘A family day out,’ I said brightly. She just stared at me. I was still thinking like a rich person, who had leisure, travel and discretionary income. It costs £13 per person to go on board. So what I meant by my remarks to Buerk was, if you have no money to do anything, not even take the bus to the job centre, you do nothing.
You sit watching TV with your coat on, smoking. You walk slowly to the food bank, or soup kitchen, or benefits office, killing time, saving energy. You seek out places that are warm, like the library, if it hasn’t been closed, or free, like the seafront in Clacton-on-Sea.
EVERY day is spent battling for the rights to the money that will allow you to continue to survive. It’s not a life. It’s an existence. That’s what I meant, and sort of what I said.
I don’t care about the trolls on Twitter, and won’t apologise to them, but I do care about Dee, Mick and Jackie. I’m sorry they may now know I said they lived like animals (even though the truth is Dee’s alsatian lived better – with free pet food from the food bank, it ate more protein than she did). So I’d like to take it back. It was a terrible thing to say. But I can’t take back the fact that my wealthy, privileged friends are almost jealous, because they are right to envy me the experience.
The problem with Rich, Famous And Hungry is not that it dehumanises poor people, as The Guardian has claimed without seeing the episodes, nor that I’m an offensive, clueless Marie Antoinette, who shouldn’t have said what I said.
The problem is that so many people live like this.